Kara Odom Walker, M.D., M.P.H., MSHS is Executive Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer (CPHO), Nemours Children’s Health as of September 2020. At Nemours, Dr. Walker leads the Nemours National Office, Delaware Valley primary care, the Value Based Services Organization and related advocacy and public policy, as well as all aspects of population health strategy, research, innovation, and implementation. Her scope of responsibility includes advancement of the overall health and well-being of children, both broadly and among the populations served by Nemours. Dr. Walker collaborates with operational leaders and shares accountability for managed care initiatives, to include medically complex case management, school-based wellness programs, and other services for specific populations. Working closely with the Executive Cabinet, Dr. Walker and her team will develop and implement the organization’s national and state-specific advocacy strategies to help achieve outcomes tied to health and value while also leading Nemours’s policy agenda.
Previously, Dr. Walker served as Secretary of the Delaware Department of Health and Services (DHSS) in Governor John C. Carney’s first elected term from Feb 2017 through 2020. As Secretary, she led the principal agency charged with keeping Delawareans healthy, ensuring they get the health care they need in a fast- changing world, and providing children, families and seniors with essential social services including food benefits, disability-related services, and mental health and addiction treatment. The agency was one of the largest departments in Delaware’s government with an annual budget of more than $2 billion. Dr. Walker's many accomplishments at DHSS include developing first-in-the-nation health care spending and quality benchmarks in Delaware; creating a state reinsurance program that reduced premiums in its first year and increased the number of people covered; and shaping new Medicaid managed care contracts that include quality metrics and embed paying for value – not volume – in health care.
Secretary Walker previously worked as the Deputy Chief Science Officer at the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a nonprofit, nongovernment organization in Washington that is authorized by Congress to improve evidence available to help patients, caregivers, employers, insurers and policymakers make informed health care decisions. She managed the Institute’s long term research investments, which totaled $1.6 billion in 2016, toward a planned total of $2.5 billion by 2019.
She is a board-certified practicing family physician and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Prior to joining PCORI, she was a faculty member of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She has worked with several national organizations to advocate for health equity and for access to quality health care in minority and underserved populations, including the National Medical Association, the Student National Medical Association and the American Medical Association. Dr. Walker has been recognized for leadership by Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development, the American Medical Association and the National Medical Association. A respected leader, innovator and clinician, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2018. Election to the NAM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, recognizing individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement. Dr. Walker completed her family medicine residency at the University of California San Francisco, graduated with a Masters’ of Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Masters’ of Health Services Research from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health, where she also completed her fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program.