Currently, Dr. Washington is Chancellor Emeritus at Duke University. An internationally renowned clinical investigator and health policy scholar, Dr. Washington has been a leader in assessing medical technologies, developing clinical practice guidelines, and establishing disease prevention policies, particularly in women’s health. The thread that runs throughout all of this work is improving quality of healthcare and eliminating racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes. His research and numerous publications have greatly impacted the practice of medicine in prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, noncancerous uterine conditions management, and reproduction-related infections. His executive leadership has inspired academic health systems to adopt public health principles as core to their mission. His service to the nation through professional and government boards and committees has emphasized the importance of health equity and community engagement in health policy and public discourse.

Dr. Washington has held academic leadership positions and senior executive posts in three prominent academic health systems. Most recently, Dr. Washington was the Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University, where he also served as President and CEO of the Duke University Health System. Just prior to Duke, Dr. Washington served as Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences, Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Chief Executive Officer of the UCLA Health System. At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Dr. Washington served as Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. There, he co-founded and directed the Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations, one of the first centers of excellence conducting research on health services for minority populations. Before joining the faculty at UCSF, Dr. Washington was an epidemiologist and clinical investigator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Dr. Washington is known as one of the most vocal proponents in the U.S. of Academic Health Systems adopting health improvement as their ultimate mission, beyond the traditional missions of research, education and patient care. At Duke University, he initiated and led the transition of Duke Medicine to Duke Health, which is today demonstratively more focused on socio-economic determinants of health and building healthy communities. At UCLA, Dr. Washington consolidated disparate and widespread projects into a comprehensive and organized community engagement entity that magnified the impact of these activities. And at UCSF, he strengthened the institution’s commitment to service by building lasting partnerships with the community and by creating alignment across the entire enterprise.

Dr. Washington has also impacted the national health and healthcare agenda through his thought leadership. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (now the National Academy of Medicine) in 1997 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. He chaired the Boards of Directors of both the California HealthCare Foundation and The California Wellness Foundation, served on the Board of Trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was a director of Johnson and Johnson. Dr. Washington is founding Chair of the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a national research organization authorized by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.