March 12, 2019 – The Task Force announced today the appointments of Douglas K. Owens, M.D., M.S., as chair and Karina W. Davidson, Ph.D., M.A.Sc., as vice chair. Alex H. Krist, M.D., M.P.H., will remain in his role as vice chair. Dr. Owens will assume the role of chair from Susan J. Curry, Ph.D., who will now serve as the immediate past chair.
Dr. Owens served as vice chair from 2017 to 2019 and as a member of the Task Force from 2012 to 2015. He is a general internist and investigator at the Center for Innovation to Implementation at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. He is the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., professor at Stanford University, where he is also a professor of medicine, health research and policy, and management science and engineering. Dr. Owens is director of the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research in the Stanford University School of Medicine and director of the Center for Health Policy in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Dr. Davidson, who served as a member of the Task Force from 2014 to 2018, will now return to the Task Force as vice chair. She is senior vice president of research, dean of academic affairs, and head of the Center for Personalized Health, a new center focused on personalized health research at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research at Northwell Health. She is also a professor of behavioral medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University/Northwell Health. She has won national and international awards for her research and served as president of many professional societies.
Professional biographies for Dr. Owens, Dr. Davidson, and all Task Force members are available on the Task Force Web site at https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/about-uspstf/current-members.
