Ending Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Disparities in American Health Care
George C. Halvorson served as chairman and chief executive officer of Kaiser Permanente from 2002-2013 - and continues to serve as chairman today. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest nonprofit health plan and hospital system, serving more than 9 million members and generating about $50 billion in annual revenue.   Halvorson was recently honored with the 2013 HISTalk Health Care IT Lifetime Achievement Award as well as America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award.  He has received the Modern Healthcare/Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) CEO IT Achievement Award. The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange also awarded him the 2009 Louis Sullivan Award for leadership and achievements in advancing health care quality.  Halvorson  was recently appointed as new chair of the First 5 California Commission by Governor Jerry Brown.  Halvorson has written five health care reform guidebooks, including Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User's Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care, Health Care Reform Now!, Health Care Co-ops in Uganda, Strong Medicine, and Epidemic of Care. In 2012, he published KP Inside: 101 Letters to Us at Kaiser Permanente, which is a compilation of letters he has written to KP employees each week since September 27, 2007. He served as an advisor to the governments of Uganda, Great Britain, Jamaica, and Russia on issues of health policy and financing. His strong commitment to diversity and inter-ethnic healing has led him to his current writing project, a new book about racial and ethnic prejudice and intergroup conflict around the world.   Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Halvorson was president and chief executive officer of HealthPartners, headquartered in Minneapolis, for nearly 18 years. With more than 30 years of health care management experience, he has also held several senior management positions with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and Health Accord International.