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Mark Smith

Mark Smith is currently a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and Visiting Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley. He co-chairs the Guiding Committee of the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network.

From 1996 through 2013 was the Founding President of the California HealthCare Foundation, which he led from its formation.  An independent endowed philanthropy in Oakland, California, the Foundation began operations with $500 million in assets, made $650 million in charitable grants under his leadership, and has a current corpus of approximately $720 million. In those 17 years, Smith helped build the Foundation into a recognized leader in delivery system innovation, public reporting of care quality, and applications of new technology in health care. Smith spearheaded the launch of California HealthLine and iHealthBeat, daily electronic publications with a combined circulation of 60,000; the CHCF Center for Healthcare Reporting at USC, an award-winning initiative which partners with local publications and broadcast outlets throughout the state in producing original reporting; the CHCF Innovation Fund, which invests in companies advancing the Foundation’s mission; and the CHCF Leadership Fellows Program, whose 300 alumni/ae are senior leaders in virtually every clinical enterprise in the state.

Smith is a nationally-recognized health policy expert.  He has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 25 book chapters and monographs. He has consulted for the governments of Kuwait, Denmark, and Singapore, and is a frequent keynote speaker, including for Microsoft, Health 2.0, Kaiser Permanente, and the Library of Congress.

Dr. Smith holds a BA from Harvard College, an MD from the University of North Carolina, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. A Board-certified internist, he maintains an active clinical practice in HIV care at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. He and his wife reside in Oakland, California.