Awards

Sadena Thevarajah, JD, exemplifies moral courage through nearly two decades of work in law, health policy and community engagement. An immigrant whose family fled persecution, she channels her lived experience into bold advocacy for immigrant communities and those harmed by structural inequities.

As managing director and partner at HealthBegins, Sadena leads work to address the social and structural drivers of health—particularly in Medicaid populations. Her career spans service in the Obama Administration and leadership at the USC Schaeffer Center, the American Cancer Society, and a health tech startup.

She earned her law degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. María Hernandez is the president and chief operating officer of Impact4Health, LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to advancing health equity through innovative strategies, training, and executive education. She has extensive experience consulting with health systems nationwide and developed a national scorecard for population health that brings discipline and rigor to the practice of health equity. Dr. Hernandez is also the co-host of the Centering Health Equity podcast, which features interviews with healthcare leaders at the forefront of promoting health equity. As a thought leader in health equity and pay for success initiatives, she focuses on addressing upstream social determinants of health among vulnerable populations.

In 2015, Dr. Hernandez co-founded LatinaVIDA.org, a 501C3 public benefit corporation dedicated to inspiring the next generation of Latina executives. LatinaVIDA offers workshops, coaching, webinars, and a private community called the LatinaVIDA Leadership Collective, where Latinx professionals and their allies can support and mentor each other. Dr. Hernandez has consulted for Fortune 100 corporations, major foundations, public agencies, and elected officials and served for six years on the Alameda Health System board in Northern California. Her work has been pioneering in a challenging field, and she continues to be a tireless advocate for health equity.

As system senior director of Community and Population Health at CommonSpirit Health, Ji Im, MPH has been responsible for catalyzing, scaling and sustaining community-centered care models. In this role, her responsibilities include partnering with national, state, and local external and internal Hold.Health to integrate and align community health priorities, foster cross-sector collaborations and develop strategic community partnerships addressing the social determinants of health. Im also oversees CommonSpirit’s data and analytics platform for social needs and nonclinical data and the Social Innovation Partnership fund to fuel innovation in historically under-recognized and marginalized communities.

In addition to her work at CommonSpirit, Im serves as co-chair of the Community Care Hub workgroup for Partnership to Align Social Care, a national action and learning network to co-design a health and social care ecosystem. She also serves on the Pathways Community HUB Institute board and the American Hospital Association’s community and population advisory committee. Mrs. Im received a Catholic Health Association Tomorrow’s Leader award in 2017 and was a 2020 fellow of the American Hospital Association’s Next Generation Leadership program.

Kimberlydawn Wisdom, M.D., M.S., a Detroit physician and executive, has devoted her life to ensuring that all people have the opportunity to live their best life through optimal health.
Dr. Wisdom, who’s the senior vice president of Community Health & Equity and chief wellness and diversity officer at Henry Ford Health, helped found and lead Stakeholder Health in 2011 to improve lives in underserved communities. While serving as a key supporter and leader of Stakeholder Health, Dr. Wisdom has also helped launch and lead impactful initiatives at Henry Ford Health aimed at achieving health equity. One of those programs is the WIN (Women-Inspired Network). WIN launched in 2012 with the goal of reducing infant mortality by educating and supporting mothers through their pregnancies and their babies’ first year of life. Since the network’s inception, more than 500 WIN moms have delivered healthy babies that survived the first year of life, and Detroit’s infant mortality rate has decreased by about 35%. The gap between Black and white infant mortality rates has also tightened.
The doctor brings a unique perspective to healthcare, as she was the nation’s first state-level surgeon general and served on President Obama’s Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health.

Chaplain Alexander Aaron, MDiv, BCC, embodies these values through his work at San Antonio Regional Hospital, a 363-bed acute care hospital in Upland, Calif., and a recipient of the Excellence in Spiritual Care Award from the HealthCare Chaplaincy Network.

Known for his compassion and principled guidance, Chaplain Alex supports patients and staff through complex moral and spiritual decisions. His approach balances empathy with deep ethical insight, respecting the dignity, autonomy and diverse beliefs of those he serves.

With 15 years of experience in chaplaincy and bereavement care, Chaplain Alex holds a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is earning a Master of Healthcare Administration from Cornell University.

Dr. Kevin Barnett has dedicated three decades to bringing clarity to hospital community benefit practices and health workforce diversity. As a senior investigator at the Public Health Institute, his extensive work with hospitals, government agencies, and community Hold.Health across the country drove significant advancements in health equity. Dr. Barnett is the founding executive director of the national Center to Advance Community Health and Equity (CACHE), which fosters evidence-informed intersectoral collaboration among health care, related sectors, and diverse community Hold.Health. Other projects include the Alignment of Governance and Leadership in Healthcare (AGLH) initiative, a partnership with The Governance Institute and Stakeholder Health funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and aimed at enhancing population health knowledge among hospital board members and senior leaders. He also led a national study on hospital interventions addressing food insecurity and worked on a partnership with the New Hampshire Hospital Association and the Center for Impact Finance at the University of New Hampshire to support community development investment and policy advocacy statewide.

Dr. Barnett’s endeavors include partnerships with the National League of Cities (NLC) to promote equity-focused strategies nationwide, a collaborative strategy with Communities Lifting Communities (CLC) at the Hospital Association of Southern California to invest in affordable housing through the LA Partnership, and facilitation to establish Resident Advisory Councils in Roanoke, Virginia, to guide community revitalization efforts. He co-directed the California Future Health Workforce Commission and co-authored the 2018 report “Meeting the Demand For Health.” Dr. Barnett also serves or has served on the boards of the Trinity Health System and the Pathways Community Hub Institute, the Metrics Advisory Council for the Lown Institute Hospitals Index, the Advisory Board of Health Career Connection, and the Expert Work Group for the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center. A frequent advisor and presenter at national venues such as the National Academies of Sciences, Dr. Barnett’s ethical clarity and expertise in financial stewardship for public health institutions make him a trusted and influential leader in the field.

Dr. Somava Saha has generated life through the children she has healed, the organizations she has vitalized, the data she has made actionable, and the policies she has disrupted and made right.
Deeply committed to improving the health and well-being of underserved people and communities, Dr. Saha founded and led the 100 Million Healthier Lives initiative, a global network reaching more than 500 million people to address boundary-spanning approaches to creating health, well-being and equity. She is also the executive lead of the Wellbeing In the Nation (WIN) Network and president and CEO of Well-being and Equity (WE) in the World. Other roles have included vice president for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, primary care physician for over 15 years, vice president for Patient Centered Medical Home Development at Cambridge Health Alliance and leader of a nationally awarded whole system transformation in the Triple Aim of better health, better experience and lower cost.

In 2012, Dr. Saha received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Young Leader Award for her contributions to improving the health of the nation. With her daughter, Shohini, she also founded Raising Peacemakers, a grassroots, parent-child program that helps children and their families develop the attitudes and skills to make a meaningful difference in the world.

The doctor brings a unique perspective to healthcare, as she was the nation’s first state-level surgeon general and served on President Obama’s Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health.

Juan Carlos Belliard, PhD, has spent over two decades fostering community-university partnerships that improve health equity and empower marginalized populations. Currently assistant vice president of community partnerships and diversity at Loma Linda University, he also serves as associate professor and co-investigator at the Center for Health Disparities and Molecular Medicine.

A passionate educator and advocate, Belliard applies service-learning models in both local and international settings. His research explores medical pluralism and traditional healing systems. A tireless voice for minority health and justice, he has made a lasting impact throughout the Inland Empire and beyond.

Lauran Hardin, like Dr. Saha, is drawn to the complexity at the intersection of 21st century healthcare capacities and the painful realities of those hoping for mercy, if not all of justice. A nurse and student of those facing the end of their lives (through the Kübler- Ross Center), Lauran brings a penetrating grasp of institutional, clinical, and human complexity with the question: “What can we do better?” Many organizations of national scope have sought her help in answering that in the most practical ways.

Her work as senior advisor in developing the Camden Coalition’s National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs emerged about the same time as did the Memphis Model for police crisis intervention. So it was not surprising both shared the focus of the White House convening that resulted in the formation of Stakeholder Health in 2011.

Like Dr. Saha’s pathfinding labors with the Cambridge Health Alliance, Lauran is valued for her blend of scientific and financial acumen, always tuned to the needs of the most vulnerable as she guides the development of connected communities of care across the nation. She follows her curiosity into the very heart of the social complexity of those with chronic illnesses and then out the other side with moral courage to craft the policies and practices that reflect the best of science and ethics. She exemplifies what all of us wish to be: an advocate for justice for those “who have no voice.”