DeSalvo earned her medical degree at Tulane University.
City of New Orleans Health Commissioner and Senior Health Policy Advisor to Mayor Mitch Landrieu, Dr. Karen DeSalvo, has been announced as the next leader of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) at The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“It has been a tremendous honor and a life-changing experience to serve our community as Health Commissioner,” DeSalvo released in a statement.
Health 2.0 New Orleans Co-Founder Rahlyn Gossen once noted DeSalvo’s major effort to transform and modernize the City Health Department into one more effective and capable of improving the public’s health.
DeSalvo’s impact on New Orleans and the region will now be taken national. She will be joining the Obama Administration on January 10th, 2014, taking over for Dr. Jacob Reider, the acting national coordinator.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote to her staff, “Dr. DeSalvo’s hands-on experience with health delivery system reform and HIT and its potential to improve healthcare and public health will be invaluable assets to the Office of the National Coordinator and the department.”