PNHP Officers:
President
Dr. Adam Gaffney is president of Physicians for a National Health Program, chair of the Massachusetts chapter of PNHP, and a co-chair of the Working Group on Single-Payer Program Design, which developed the “Physicians’ Proposal for Single-Payer Health Care Reform,” recently published at the American Journal of Public Health. Dr. Gaffney is a prolific writer and blogger on health policy and also frequently appears on radio.
Dr. Gaffney is a pulmonary specialist at Cambridge Health Alliance / Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine and completed residency training at Columbia University Medical Center. He recently completed a clinical and research fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Treasurer, National Coordinator
Dr. Claudia Fegan is national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program. In her current and past leadership roles in PNHP she has appeared on national television and radio programs on behalf of the organization, and has testified before congressional committees on a wide range of health care issues. She has lectured extensively to both medical and community audiences on health care reform in the U.S. and Canada, and is a co-author of the book “Universal Healthcare: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience” and a contributor to “10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care.”
Dr. Fegan is chief medical officer for the Cook County Health and Hospital System and John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County. She is also president of the Chicago-based Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. In 2016, Modern Healthcare named Dr. Fegan one of “10 Minority Executives to Watch,” noting her achievements in the medical profession and her single-payer activism. She is the 2017 recipient of the Paul Cornely award from the Physicians Forum.
Dr. Fegan received her undergraduate degree from Fisk University and her medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine. She is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, certified in health care quality and management, and a diplomate of the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians.
Secretary
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler is a practicing primary care physician, distinguished professor of public health and health policy in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, adjunct clinical professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she co-directed the general internal medicine fellowship program and practiced primary care internal medicine at Cambridge Hospital.
Dr. Woolhandler earned her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University; her medical degree from Louisiana State University; and her master’s degree from the University of California. She worked in 1990-1991 as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health policy fellow at the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Congress.
Dr. Woolhandler is a frequent speaker and has written extensively on health policy, administrative overhead and the uninsured. She has authored more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters, and books on health policy. A sample of Dr. Woolhandler’s grand rounds at the University of Southern California Keek School of Medicine is available here.
A co-founder and board member of Physicians for a National Health Program, Dr. Woolhandler co-edits PNHP’s newsletter and is a principal author of PNHP articles published in the JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine in conjunction with Dr. David Himmelstein.
Immediate Past President
Dr. Carol Paris is a recently retired psychiatrist who worked for more than 25 years in private practice, community mental health, prison psychiatry, and academia. In the course of her experience, much of which was in Maryland, she became an outspoken critic of the private-insurance-based U.S. health care system.
In May 2009, she and seven others stood up, one by one, at a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care reform chaired by Sen. Max Baucus to ask why there wasn’t a single advocate for single-payer health care on the 41-member panel. In an action that received national media attention, Baucus had all eight peaceful protesters, including Dr. Paris, arrested. (Charges were eventually reduced, requiring only community service.)
Dr. Paris subsequently toured the country as part of the “Mad as Hell Doctors” campaign for single payer, and spent a year as a consultant psychiatrist in New Zealand, where she experienced a single-payer system firsthand. She currently resides in Nashville, Tenn., where her primary interests include strategic activism, recruiting and mentoring medical students and early career physicians for leadership positions within PNHP, and building coalitions to strengthen the single-payer movement’s impact on the national health care debate. Dr. Paris obtained her medical degree from West Virginia University School of Medicine.
Directors:
Nahiris M. Bahamón Fernández, MD, FAAP
Robertha Barnes, M3
Chris Cai, M2
Olveen Carrasquillo, MD, MPH
Diana Chang, M2
Stephen K. Chao, MD
Ashley Duhon, M4
Scott Goldberg, MD
Stephen B. Kemble, MD
Danny McCormick, MD, MPH
Mary E. O’Brien, MD
Janine Petito, MD
Susan Rogers, MD
Jessica Schorr Saxe, MD
Ann Settgast, MD, DTM&H
Paul Y. Song, MD
Philip Verhoef, MD, PhD, FAAP, FACP
Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, FACP
Michael Zingman, M3
Past Presidents:
Garrett Adams, MD, MPH, FAAP
Carolyn Clancy, MD, MACP (temporarily resigned)
Andrew D. Coates, MD, FACP
Claudia Fegan, MD, FACP
Oliver Fein, MD
John Geyman, MD
Robert LeBow, MD (deceased)
Ana Malinow, MD, MS, FAAP
Don McCanne, MD
Carol Paris, MD
Glenn Pearson, MD
Deb Richter, MD
Cecile Rose, MD, MPH
Jonathon Ross, MD, MPH
Jeffrey Scavron, MD
Gordon Schiff, MD
Susan Steigerwalt, MD, FACP
Isaac Taylor, MD (deceased)
Quentin Young, MD, MACP (deceased)
Robert L. Zarr, MD, MPH, FAAP
Board Advisers:
Henry L. Abrons, MD, MPH
John D. Bower, MD
Richard Bruno, MD, MPH
Joshua Faucher, MD, JD
Harvey Fernbach, MD, MPH
Margaret Flowers, MD
Andrew Hyatt, MD
David McLanahan, MD
Karen Palmer, MPH, MS
Roona Ray, MD, MPH
Diljeet K. Singh, MD, DrPH
Robert C. Stone, MD
Arthur J. Sutherland III, MD
Kay Tillow
Walter Tsou, MD, MPH
National Office Staff:
Matthew Petty – Executive Director
Clare Fauke – Communications Specialist
Dixon Galvez-Searle – Communications Specialist
Kaytlin Gilbert – Organizer
Chapter Leaders:
For a list of chapters with contact information, please refer to our state page.
Newsletter Editors:
Clare Fauke
David Himmelstein, MD
Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH