As Congress chips away at Obamacare with the elimination of the individual mandate in the tax reform plan, Karen DeSalvo, who led the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT from 2014-2016 under the Obama administration, will be taking the health policy discussion to the classroom. She’s set to begin a faculty position with the health policy group at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, Austin, according to a Dell Medical School news release.
DeSalvo will serve as a professor in the Division of Primary Care and Value-Based Health. She will work in the Department of Internal Medicine and in the Department of Population Health.
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Karen DeSalvo
But her work at Dell Medical School will take her beyond the confines of the classroom according to the announcement. She’ll also work on projects that involve different parts of the medical school across community health, medical care and research on the social determinants of health. And she will be involved with applying digital health to public health programs.
The news comes as Austin seeks to fulfill its ambition to build a healthcare innovation zone through Capital City Innovation. In addition to the University of Texas, other founding members include Central Health, and Seton Healthcare Family, a faith-based, nonprofit health system that’s also a member of the Ascension nonprofit health system. Dell is still a very young medical school — with its first class of medical students only in the second year of studies. Merck is also planning to build a tech hub near Dell Medical School which is expected to bring 600 jobs to the region. The hub would work with Dell Medical School and Austin Healthcare Council to blend technology and science for drug and vaccine development.
“As a brand-new institution, it has a unique opportunity to design an educational, clinical and community approach to health,” DeSalvo said in the statement. “The innovation that’s happening here is exciting, and I look forward to joining the dynamic and distinguished team of leaders.”
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