As scientific medical director, Kristen leads a team of scientists, clinician-researchers and analysts to use the resources and data within our integrated network to incubate innovative solutions to eliminate health disparities and advance the science of health equity. Over the past decade, she has led numerous published studies in the areas of health services research, health disparities and health equity. She holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Bloomberg School of Public Health and was named a Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA) in 2018. She earned her Ph.D. in epidemiology and translational science from the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Brown is an Emergency Physician at Sutter Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. She has been actively engaged in complex care and health equity efforts since joining the medical staff in 2014, and from 2017-2018, she co-chaired the Community-Integrated Healthcare Partnership.  As the Clinical Lead for the Institute, Dr. Brown contributes her clinical, policy, and care coordination expertise to the design and implementation of pilot programs and research efforts. 

Rifa joined Sutter Health in 2023 as a program manager in Sutter’s Institute for Advancing Health Equity. She earned her bachelor’s degree in human development from the University of California, Davis, and her Master of Public Health degree from University of California, Los Angeles. Rifa is passionate about working in underserved communities to address and mitigate health disparities. She has years of experience managing programs focused on health equity. Additionally, Rifa’s research on cervical cancer policies in Sub-Saharan Africa has been published in the Journal of Cancer Policy.

Maria has been with Sutter Health since 2003, leading the system’s health equity initiatives including the Advancing Health Equity Program and a system effort to collect self-reported patient demographic information (Race/ Ethnicity/ Ancestry/ Language). She received two awards from The California Endowment and one award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to address language and diversity needs across the system. Maria holds a Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University. In 2017, she received a fellowship to the Harvard Medical School Disparities Leadership Program.  

Alexandra is operations manager for the Sutter Health Institute for Advancing Health Equity. As the team grows, she leads infrastructure-building projects from start to finish to adapt to changing needs of the institute and its partners to maximize team efficiency. Alex holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon where she studied International Studies, French and Business. Alex is experienced in project and operations management in both local and global healthcare settings. She brings a global health perspective from her time serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, West Africa, as well as her time working in administrative capacities for University of Washington’s International Training and Education Center for Health. More locally, Alex has been with Sutter Health since 2012. She has worked at the affiliate level in various administrative roles at Samuel Merritt University in the College of Nursing and as a project manager in the Sutter Health Center for Health Systems Research.

Zijun supports data and analytic needs for the programs and initiatives of the Sutter Health Institute for Advancing Health Equity. He provides key support for investigators and program stakeholders on managing analytic datasets from various data sources, study design and statistical analysis. Zijun has been with Sutter Health since 2017. He holds a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Florida.

Akash is the Senior BI Developer for the Sutter Health Institute for Advancing Health Equity. He is certified in many Enterprise BI tools, including Tableau and MicroStrategy. Akash provides key support in data and analytics, acute and ambulatory quality measures, new clinical measures data research and compilation, and establishing standards and best practices for BI tools, data warehousing, and embedded analytics. Akash holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Lamar University in Texas. He has been with Sutter Health since 2015.