Christine K. Cassel, MD
Dr. Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics, health policy and quality of care. She completed her term as Planning Dean of the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine in March 2018, and now works on a set of projects, some in collaboration with the University of California, related to her expertise and interests in aging and longevity, technology and quality in health and health care, and biomedical ethics.
From 2013-2016 she was the President and CEO of the National Quality Forum and prior to that served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation. Christine was one of 20 scientists chosen by President Obama to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). She graduated from the University of Chicago and completed her MD degree at the University of Massachusetts. She did her residency in internal medicine at Children’s Hospital of San Francisco and University of California at San Francisco, where she also was a founder and graduate of the bioethics fellowship program.
She was the first fellow in Geriatric Medicine at the Portland VA Medical Center and Oregon Health Sciences University where she returned as Dean of the Medical School in 2001. She was chair of the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Chief of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago. Christine was elected to membership of the National Academy of Medicine in 1992. She was the first woman to be President of the American College of Physicians and, subsequently, Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine; she has served as Chair of the Board of the Greenwall Foundation, was the President of the American Federation for Aging Research; and was a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director at the National Institutes of Health.