David A. Relman, M.D., is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California. He is also Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford, and served as science co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford from 2013-2017. He is currently director of a new Biosecurity Initiative at FSI.

Relman was an early pioneer in the modern study of the human indigenous microbiota. Most recently, his work has focused on human microbial community assembly, and community stability and resilience in the face of disturbance. Ecological theory and predictions are tested in clinical studies with multiple approaches for characterizing the human microbiome. Previous work included the development of molecular methods for identifying novel microbial pathogens, and the subsequent identification of several historically important microbial disease agents. One of his papers was selected as “one of the 50 most important publications of the past century” by the American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Relman received an S.B. (Biology) from MIT, M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and joined the faculty at Stanford in 1994. He served as vice-chair of the NAS Committee that reviewed the science performed as part of the FBI investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, as a member of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, and as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is currently a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the Committee on Science, Technology and the Law, both at the National Academies of Science. He has received an NIH Pioneer Award, an NIH Transformative Research Award, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.

Dr. Babiarz’s research focuses on fertility and family planning programs, infant and maternal health, and the gender dynamics of global health. She has studied human trafficking in China and South East Asia, and currently works on quantitative approaches to issues of human trafficking and child labor in Brazil.  Dr. Babiarz specializes in large-scale program evaluations and quasi-experimental study designs. She holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis (2011).

Dr.  Jonathan Shaw is a practicing family physician at Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto, and a health services researcher at Stanford and the VA Palo Alto. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1999, MD from Harvard Medical School in 2006, and MS in Health Research and Policy from Stanford in 2013.  While completing his residency in family medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University from 2006-2009, he obtained additional training as a visiting scholar in Mbabane, Swaziland via the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, and as a clinical research scholar in rural Guatemala.  Influenced by his experience providing rural maternal and infant care abroad, after residency he practiced full spectrum family medicine in a community health center serving largely migrant agriculture population in Oregon.  In 2011 he joined Stanford CHP/PCOR as a Health Services Research fellow. His research interests include women's health, the impact of health policies on vulnerable and underserved populations, and primary care redesign.  Recent work has focused on psycho-social influences on health and health care across the lifespan, and includes examining the contribution of stress to preterm birth, and--at the other end of the lifespan--the influence of social isolation on older adult’s health care use. Dr. Shaw has also contributed to partnered research and implementation science both at the VA Palo Alto (as clinical lead and coinvestigator of an intensive outpatient care program (ImPACT) targeting ‘super-users’ of VA care) and at Stanford within the Evaluation Sciences Unit (ESU) to rigorously evaluate novel models of primary care.

C. Jason Wang, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy and director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford University.  He received his B.S. from MIT, M.D. from Harvard, and Ph.D. in policy analysis from RAND.  After completing his pediatric residency training at UCSF, he worked in Greater China with McKinsey and Company, during which time he performed multiple studies in the Asian healthcare market. In 2000, he was recruited to serve as the project manager for the Taskforce on Reforming Taiwan's National Health Insurance System. His fellowship training in health services research included the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Research Service Award Fellowship at UCLA. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2011, he was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health (2006-2010) and Associate Professor (2010-2011) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center. 

Among his accomplishments, he was selected as the student speaker for Harvard Medical School Commencement (1996).  He received the Overseas Chinese Outstanding Achievement Medal (1996), the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholars Career Development Award (2007), the CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award for Transformative Innovation in Healthcare Research (2010), and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2011). He was recently named a “Viewpoints” editor and a regular contributor for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  He served as an external reviewer for the 2011 IOM Report “Child and Adolescent Health and Health Care Quality: Measuring What Matters” and as a reviewer for AHRQ study sections.

Dr. Wang has written two bestselling Chinese books published in Taiwan and co-authored an English book “Analysis of Healthcare Interventions that Change Patient Trajectories”.  His essay, "Time is Ripe for Increased U.S.-China Cooperation in Health," was selected as the first-place American essay in the 2003 A. Doak Barnett Memorial Essay Contest sponsored by the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

Currently he is the principal investigator on a number of quality improvement and quality assessment projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (USA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Andrew T. Huang Medical Education Promotion Fund (Taiwan).

Dr. Wang’s research interests include: 1) developing tools for assessing and improving the quality of healthcare; 2) facilitating the use of innovative consumer technology in improving quality of care and health outcomes; 3) studying competency-based medical education curriculum, and 4) improving health systems performance.

Dr. Lee Sanders is a general pediatrician and Professor of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is Chief of the Division of General Pediatrics. He holds a joint appointment in the Center for Health Policy in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he is a co-director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention (CPOP).

An author of numerous peer-reviewed articles addressing child health disparities, Dr. Sanders is a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of health literacy and child chronic-illness care.  Dr. Sanders was named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar for his leadership on the role of maternal health literacy and English-language proficiency in addressing child health disparities.  Aiming to make the US health system more navigable for the one in 4 families with limited health literacy, he has served as an advisor to the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Academic Pediatric Association, and the American Cancer Society.  Dr. Sanders leads a multi-disciplinary CPOP research team that provides analytic guidance to national and state policies affecting children with complex chronic illness – with a focus on the special health-system requirements that arise from the unique epidemiology, care-use patterns, and health-care costs for this population.  He leads another CPOP/PCOR-based research team that applies family-centered approaches to new technologies that aim to improve care coordination for children with medical complexity.    Dr. Sanders is also principal investigator on two NIH-funded studies that address health literacy in the pediatric context: one aims to assess the efficacy of a low-literacy, early-childhood intervention designed to prevent early childhood obesity; the other aims to provide the FDA with guidance on improved labeling of pediatric liquid medication.  Research settings for this work include state and regional health departments, primary-care and subspecialty-care clinics, community-health centers, WIC offices, federally subsidized child-care centers, and family advocacy centers.

Dr. Sanders received a BA in History and Science from Harvard University, an MD from Stanford University, and a MPH from the University of California, Berkeley.  Between 2006 and 2011, Dr. Sanders served as Medical Director of Children’s Medical Services South Florida, a Florida state agency that coordinates care for more than 10,000 low-income children with special health care needs.  He was also Medical Director for Reach Out and Read Florida, a pediatric-clinic-based program that provides books and early-literacy promotion to more than 200,000 underserved children.  At the University of Miami, Dr. Sanders directed the Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Equity, which fosters a scholarly community committed to addressing global health inequities through community-based participatory research.  At Stanford University, Dr. Sanders served as co-medical director of the Family Advocacy Program, which provides free legal assistance to help address social determinants of child health.

Fluent in Spanish, Dr. Sanders is co-director of the Complex Primary Care Clinic at Stanford Children’s Health, which provides multi-disciplinary team care for children with complex chronic conditions.  Dr. Sanders is also the father of two daughters, aged 11 and 14 years, who make sure he practices talking less and listening more.