Keynote Speakers

Gregory Downing, D.O., Ph.D. Executive Director for Innovation for the Immediate Office of the Secretary United States Department of Health and Human Services

Gregory Downing, D.O., Ph.D., is the Executive Director for Innovation for the Immediate Office of the Secretary at the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Prior to his move to HHS in 2006, Dr. Downing served at the National Institutes of Health since 1993 in research, policy and program management roles.

Dr. Downing earned his medical degree from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Kansas. He completed his residency in pediatrics and fellowship in neonatology before joining the faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Neonatology at The Children's Mercy Hospital. Dr. Downing is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in pediatrics and neonatology-perinatal medicine.

Dr. M. Narendra Kini President and CEO, Miami Children's Hospital

M. Narendra Kini, M. Narendra Kini, M.D., MHA is President and CEO of Miami Children's Hospital. He is committed to expanding the hospital's network to bring Miami Children's Hospital (MCH)-quality pediatric care to children and families throughout the region. Dr. Kini, who is a board-certified pediatrician, is also committed to improving the health status of children. Before joining Miami Children's, Dr. Kini served as Executive Vice President for Clinical and Physician Services at Trinity Health, the fourth largest Catholic health system in the United States. He was responsible for physician issues, clinical informatics, patient safety, comprehensive tertiary care and pharmacy operations for the $5.7 billion health system.

Prior to Trinity Health, Dr. Kini held various positions related to information technology at GE Medical Systems, the latest as Director of the GE Healthcare Leadership Institute. He previously served as Ancillary and Support Vice President at the Children's Health System in Milwaukee.

Jim Burgess Professor, Health Policy & Management Boston University School  of Public Health

Jim Burgess is a health economist with more than 20 years of extensive health care management, research, and educational experience putting health services research into practice in diverse settings. He also serves the field as a founding co-editor of the electronic Health Economics Letters, the first fully electronic peer-reviewed journal in health economics, and as an associate editor of its parent journal, Health Economics. He also serves on the editorial board of Health Services Research, one of the journals of AcademyHealth, where he is on the steering committee for the Quality Interest Group.  Currently, he also is the secretary/treasurer for the International Health Economics Association. And he has an appointment as a Senior Investigator in the Center for Organization, Leadership, and Management Research of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

His wide-ranging intellectual pursuits include special interests in considering effects of local context in efficiency analysis, audience differences in provider quality profiling, physician productivity and pay for performance, organizational learning and change, and patient heterogeneity in risk adjustment. At Boston University, he currently directs the master's and doctoral programs in Health Services Research and is the director of the Health Economics Program.