Adjoa Boateng Evans, MD 

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Adjoa Boateng Evans is a board-certified, award-winning anesthesiologist and intensivist, trained at Yale University and Stanford University. Her work spans clinical medicine, research, teaching, and medical humanities advocacy.

Before entering medicine, she completed extensive work in public health to serve those at the margins of society and champion equitable healthcare.

She currently seeks to explore the intersection of art and medicine and uses medical humanities as a tool for healing and reconnecting with one's purpose.

Tara Narula M.D., F.A.C.C.

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Tara Narula is a board-certified cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, an Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine, Hofstra/Northwell, the Associate Director of the Women’s Heart Program at Lenox Hill Hospital and Director of Communications for the Katz Institute of Women’s Health. She is also a nationally recognized medical journalist. She is the Chief Medical Correspondent at ABC News and a former medical contributor for NBC News, the former CNN Medical Correspondent within CNN’s award-winning Health, Medical and Wellness team and previously was the Senior Medical Correspondent at CBS News reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms including “CBS Mornings”, “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell”, “CBS Saturday Morning”, “CBS Sunday Morning” and “CBS Streaming Network”. She has been a past contributor as well to O, Oprah Magazine. She joined Lenox Hill Heart & Vascular Institute of New York in 2010 and provides outpatient consultative care. After graduating from Stanford University with degrees in Economics and Biology, she was founder and CEO of her own small business, Sun Juice Inc. Subsequently she obtained her medical degree at USC Keck School of Medicine where she graduated with Alpha Omega Alpha Society Honors. Dr. Narula completed her residency in internal medicine at Harvard University/Brigham and Women's Hospital and her fellowship training in cardiology at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Narula is currently a fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC). She serves as a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association and the AHA’s Go Red for Women Initiative. She is co-director of a mentoring program for women in medicine called FaceofCardiology which serves to help guide women pursuing possible careers in cardiology. She is a recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Live News Program CBS Mornings, the 2019 WomenHeart Nanette Wenger Award for Media and the Super Doctors Award for NYC 2014-2025. Her interests include women's health, prevention, mental health and resilience. She is the author of the NYT Bestseller “The Healing Power of Resilience” published in 2026.

  • Abha Khandelwal, MD

    SPEAKER

    Abha Khandelwal is an imaging cardiologist who has clinical experience in cardio-obstetrics, structural disease and prevention of cardiovascular disease in high risk populations. She has a Master’s in Management of Information Systems and has integrated technology to improve operations within the cardiovascular ambulatory clinics. She serves as the Ambulatory Clinic Chief for Cardiovascular Medicine and the General Cardiology Section Lead. Her research spans clinical trials in preventative cardiology, imaging, cardio-obstetrics and women’s heart health. She is the cardiac director of the maternal heart program in collaboration with Maternal Fetal Medicine and Anesthesia. She has participated in a broad range of phase II- phase III clinical trials targeting treatment of elevated lipoprotein a for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, diabetes control in cardiovascular disease and dyslipidemia in high risk populations. She has worked within the Stanford South Asian Translational Heart Initiative (SSATHI) program looking at technology utilization to improve adherence to care plans in the south Asian population. She is the course director for the first annual CME for transforming cardiac rehab in the fall at Stanford. She has utilized digital health initiatives to improve cardiometabolic profile of women with history of gestational diabetes and hypertension post-partum. She is an active member in the AHA go red scientific advisory committee and helped with virtual enrollment for their initiatives. As Ambulatory Clinic Chief, she has worked at operationalizing mobile technology within the clinics and used remote patient monitoring to improve patient outcomes. Her vision is to integrate technology to improve health care delivery, health in high-risk populations, and reduce health disparities.

  • Amy Larocca

    SPEAKER

    Amy Larocca is an award-winning American journalist. She spent 20 years working at New York magazine as both Fashion Director and Editor at Large. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country and the London Review of Books, among others.

  • Brooke Cotter, MD

    SPEAKER

    Brooke Cotter, MD, is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine and a board-certified internist. She completed her medical degree at Stanford University School of Medicine and her internal medicine residency at Stanford University, followed by board certification from the American Board of Internal Medicine.

    Dr. Cotter serves on several institutional and professional committees, including the Stanford Hospital Ethics Committee and the Stanford Hospital Committee for Professionalism, and is a Fellow of the CIGH Faculty. She previously served on the Professional Affairs Committee of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. In addition to her academic and clinical roles, Dr. Cotter is the Director of the UGHE–Stanford Education Initiative, reflecting her commitment to community engagement and global health education.

  • Catherine Lau, MD

    SPEAKER

    Catherine Lau is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at UCSF and a member of the Division of Hospital Medicine since 2009. She currently serves as the Director of Caring Wisely at UCSF Health where she focuses her efforts in redesigning and innovating systems of care at UCSF Health to improve quality, safety, value, and the patient experience. Catherine is also the Co-Director for Health Systems Improvement in the Clinical Microsystems Clerkship in the UCSF School of Medicine where she co-leads an experiential curricula for pre-clinical medical students to gain meaningful experiences in health systems improvement and A3 problem solving. Catherine serves as a UCSF School of Medicine Bridges curriculum coach, where she closely works with medical students in teaching them systems improvement skills, clinical reasoning, the patient interview, and the hypothesis-driven physical exam, while assisting them with career exploration advice. Lastly, Catherine currently serves as the Director for Recruitment and Hiring for the Division of Hospital Medicine that now has over 100 academic and clinical faculty.

  • Ehsan Adeli, PhD

    SPEAKER

    Ehsan Adeli holds a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and computer vision, with postgraduate training in biomedical imaging and computational neuroscience. His work addresses critical problems at the intersection of healthcare and neuroscience.

    His research group focuses on developing Translational Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms for applications in medicine and mental health. His research involves the automatic analysis of human activities and behaviors from video data and the integration of these behavioral patterns with brain structure and function through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). By developing and applying explainable machine learning methods, he aims to identify the underlying factors of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders and to understand their impact on everyday human behavior.

    His research bridges two core domains: digital humans and human neuroscience. He studies 3D motion, actions, and behaviors using a range of human sensing technologies, including video and wearable sensor data. In parallel, he incorporates clinical and cognitive assessments alongside neuroimaging modalities such as MRI to investigate brain function and neural processes. By integrating these approaches, his group develops computational world models for neuroscience that advance clinical applications and deepen understanding of the complex relationship between human behavior and brain function.

  • Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD

    SPEAKER

    Dr. Elisabeth L. Rosenthal, was appointed editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News in 2016, after more than 2 decades with the New York Times. She received a B.S. degree in biology from Stanford University, an M.A. degree in English literature from Cambridge University, and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School.

    Rosenthal began her Times career as a reporter in the science department, and went on to cover the health and hospitals beat on the metro desk. In 2008, after a stint in Beijing and another in Rome, she returned to the U.S. as a New York-based Times senior writer covering environmental issues.

    Rosenthal went back to healthcare writing after being asked to cover the Affordable Care Act during the 2012 election campaign. Libby’s two-year-long New York Times series “Paying Till it Hurts” (2013-14) won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. "An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back," her first book, grew out of her desire to help patients understand and tackle the high cost of U.S. medicine.University and Harvard Medical School and briefly practiced medicine in a New York City emergency room before converting to journalism.

  • Ian McCaffery, PhD

    SPEAKER

    As an experienced leader in the Precision Medicine, Translational Research & Companion Diagnostics field, Ian McCaffery has extensive experience leading teams across Oncology, Immunology, Metabolic Disorders and Neuroscience therapeutic areas, leading to discovery and development of pharmacodynamics, mechanistic and pharmacodynamic marker and successful approvals of Companion Diagnostics. He is currently the Vice President of Global Head of Precision Medicine Abbvie.

  • Karen E. Adams MD, FACOG, DipABLM, MSCP, IF

    SPEAKER

    Dr. Adams is Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Program in Menopause and Healthy Aging, a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Center on Longevity, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Stanford Women's Health and Sex Differences Center. She is doubly board-certified in both OB-GYN and Lifestyle Medicine and is a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner as well as a fellow of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health. She has been practicing for over 30 years with focused expertise on menopause management, female sexual dysfunction treatment, and lifestyle medicine.

    Dr. Adams’ deep-rooted dedication to women’s health is evidenced by her leadership on numerous professional societies, committees, and boards and by the many awards she has received, including the Mentor of the Year Award from the American College of OBGYN. Dr. Adams has provided expert commentary to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, and hundreds of independent print and online media outlets. She is an expert educator, hosting the Stanford Conversations in Menopause & Healthy Aging Podcast and educating audiences nationally and internationally, including delivering a popular TEDx talk “Sleep, Sex, and Menopausal Zest” that has received over 165 thousand views.

  • Kevin Schulman, MD

    SPEAKER

    Dr. Schulman is a Professor of Medicine, and, by courtesy,Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He serves as an Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine. He is the Faculty Director of Stanford’s new applied master degree program, the Master of Science in Clinical Informatics Management program. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC) at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and has an appointment in the Department of Health Policy (by courtesy).

    Dr. Schulman is a health economist/health services researcher working at the intersection of business, medicine and technology. With over 500 publications, he has had a broad impact on several areas of health policy (Scopus h-index=83). His research has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. He is the editor-in-chief of Health Management, Policy and Innovation (www.HMPI.Org), and Senior Associate Editor of Health Service Research (HSR).

  • Maria Sophocles, MD, FACOG, MSCP, IF

    SPEAKER

    From 2001 to 2007, Dr. Sophocles was a visiting professor and member of an NIH research team at the Frauenspital in Basel, Switzerland. When she moved back to the U.S. in 2007, she founded Women’s Healthcare of Princeton, a progressive gynecology practice that now draws patients from all over the U.S.

    A board-certified ob/gyn, she is also a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner. She has been recognized for her contributions to gynecology and, as such, has been named a fellow of both the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH) and the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Diseases (ISSVD).

    In 2015, she was one of the first U.S. clinicians to recognize the need for a non-estrogen option to treat vaginal atrophy in breast cancer survivors and pioneered the use of CO2 laser both intravaginally and on the vulva. She has taught clinicians this technology on five continents and advocated for women’s health, reproductive, and sexual rights in the U.S. and abroad.

    Working with New Jersey Senator Shirley Turner in 2023, she played a crucial role in the passage of a bill in New Jersey allowing women to obtain contraception without serial visits to a clinician.

  • Meg Autry, MD

    SPEAKER

    Dr. Meg Autry is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist and the interim Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCSF, Fresno. In her clinical practice, she does obstetrics and complex gynecology. Her areas of interest include family planning and benign gynecology. Dr. Autry is a member of the Academy of Medical Educators and serves on the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology's Complex Family Planning Division. She is the past president of the Association of Professors of Gynecology and of the SF Gyn Society. She was the Scientific Program Chair for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) 2022 annual meeting and is the current Scientific Program Chair for the Federation of International Gynecologists and Obstetricians.

  • Mildred Cho, PhD

    SPEAKER

    Mildred Cho, PhD is a Professor (Research) in Pediatrics at the Center for Biomedical Ethics and in Medicine in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford University. She also serves as Associate Director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, a role she has held since 2003. Dr. Cho’s work sits at the intersection of biomedical ethics, genomics, and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genomics, precision medicine, and machine learning in healthcare.

    Dr. Cho has led and co-led numerous nationally funded research initiatives, including NIH NHGRI grants on integrating ethics into machine learning for precision medicine, fairness and representation in AI datasets, and the development of national ELSI resources. Her contributions have been recognized with the Bernard Lo, MD Award for Mentorship from the Greenwall Foundation and election as a Fellow of The Hastings Center. She plays a significant advisory role at the national and international levels, serving on multiple NIH boards and committees, including the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Human Genome Research Institute, and as Co-Director of the Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis.

  • Nirav Shah, MD, MPH

    SPEAKER

    Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, is Senior Scholar at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. He is a distinguished healthcare leader with experience as an operator, scientist, innovator, and regulator. His expertise spans public health, digital health and generative AI, public and private health insurance, and clinical operations across the continuum of care. At Stanford, Dr. Shah conducts research on improving healthcare quality and safety while lowering cost, driving adoption of digital technologies, and quantitatively evaluating the resulting value for US and international health care systems. Dr. Shah is Board-certified in Internal Medicine and is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale School of Medicine. He is an Advisor to the CDC Director, Senior Fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), independent director of STERIS plc [NYSE:STE], and trustee of the John A. Hartford Foundation. Previously, he served as Chief Operating Officer of Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, and as Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.

  • Russ Altman, MD

    SPEAKER

    Russ Biagio Altman is the Kenneth Fong Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine, Biomedical Data Science and (by courtesy) Computer Science) and past chairman of the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of computing (AI, data science and informatics) to problems relevant to medicine. He is particularly interested in methods for understanding drug action at molecular, cellular, organism and population levels. His lab studies how human genetic variation impacts drug response (e.g., http://www.pharmgkb.org/). Other work focuses on the analysis of biological molecules to understand the actions, interactions and adverse events of drugs (e.g., http://helix.stanford.edu/). He helps lead an FDA-supported Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science & Innovation.

  • Sharon F. Chen, MD, MS

    SPEAKER

    Dr. Chen is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Stanford University, and Member of the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI).

  • Stephen Nix, MD, MA

    SPEAKER

    Dr. Nix received his bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and is interested in the integration of health humanities principles into pathology education and practice. He received his MD from UAMS, Little Rock, and participated in the Medical Research Scholars Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He completed a combined Anatomic and Neuropathology fellowship through Johns Hopkins Hospital and continues to practice as a board-certified neuropathologist with special interests in head, neck, and eye pathology.

    Dr. Nix has presented internationally, nationally, and regionally in pathology, published over fifteen peer-reviewed articles and multiple book chapters, and received awards in surgical pathology research, resident education, and creative writing. He currently serves as a subspecialty editor for PathologyOutlines.com and is a member of the American Association of Neuropathologists, North American Society of Head and Neck Pathology, and the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology.