Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H, MBA, is the newest member of LifeLong’s Board of Directors, bringing a wealth of knowledge to LifeLong about healthcare delivery.
Shortell is Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management Emeritus, Dean Emeritus, and Professor of the Graduate School at the School of Public Health and Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. He served two terms as UC Berkeley’s Dean of the School of Public Health from 2002 to 2013.
Of his decision last month to join the now 15-member board, Shortell said, “I realized this was an organization where I felt I could bring my knowledge and expertise – and be of help with the challenges that everybody faces these days in healthcare.”
Shortell has been connected to LifeLong since 2002, when he met former Executive Director and CEO Marty Lynch. “I was a great fan of the organization over the years,” he says. Since retiring from academia in 2017, Shortell has been busy as a member of organizations devoted to integrated healthcare, quality improvement, patient engagement, and housing as a social determinant of health. He is author or co-author of nearly 400 peer-reviewed articles and 10 books and the winner of numerous healthcare awards.
Shortell says he is looking forward to helping LifeLong pursue new revenue streams and is a proponent of deepening partnerships with local healthcare providers such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health. He noted that as patients lose healthcare benefits, large health systems have an incentive to work closely with primary care providers to keep patients from overwhelming their emergency departments.
“I refer to this as kind of the ecosystem of LifeLong – the surrounding food banks and housing and what other health systems can do,” Shortell says. “That’s part of what LifeLong can benefit from if we think creatively about those possibilities.”
“I’m delighted to be on the board,” he adds. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
