International leader and change agent
As of August 2024, Dr. Nwando is President of the Advocate National Center for Health Equity (ANCHE) and Senior Vice President at Advocate Health, the nation’s third largest non-profit healthcare system, serving over 6 million patients in multiple states. Dr. Nwando served as the inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer and Senior Vice President of Humana, Inc., from April 2021- July 2024. She is an industry trailblazer, one of the first people to hold such a role in managed care and in a Fortune 500 company. In this role, was enormously successful, positioning Humana as a national pioneer in health equity leadership. Katie Couric interviewed Dr. Nwando and called her a “health equity trailblazer”. Dr. Nwando led the development and implementation of a comprehensive and robust health equity agenda and strategy to promote health equity across all Humana lines of business, including its care delivery assets. She also led the company in defining enterprise-wide measures for equity, designing a health equity lens for improvement, setting goals and coordinating efforts to achieve health equity for millions of patients and members across the nation.
Additionally, Dr. Nwando led the first national effort to integrate health literacy and perceived healthcare discrimination screenings in a national health plan, in addition to screening for social needs, and her team’s work was published by the American Journal of Managed Care in February 2024. She also had direct oversight of many other quality, safety, equity and/or social needs focused pilot programs and innovations (product, workflow, and/or programs) for Humana members and patients. She was instrumental in the design, founding, implementation and/or funding of the Health Equity Innovation Hub at University of Louisville, the University of Houston Humana Institute, the Thomas Jefferson University College of Population Health Endowment for Chairs and Professors in Health Equity and the Louisville Urban League Sadiqa Reynolds Health Justice Fund. Additionally, she led a team in the funding and support of multiple community-based organizations across the nation.
Dr. Nwando previously served as Chair and Professor of the Ohio State University Department of Family and Community Medicine, leading a large department of over 500 physicians, other clinicians, trainees and staff. She is also the Founding Director of the Center for Primary Care Innovation and Transformation at Ohio State.
She provided clinical care at the OSU Carepoint East clinic, serving a large urban underserved patient populations. She previously served as the Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at RubiconMD, a leading technology firm delivering electronic consults between primary and specialty care physicians.
Additional roles she has held include clinical physician and refugee health physicians at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Family Health Center, the Director of the UCSF Center for Excellence in Primary Care and the Chief Medical Officer of Community Health Center, Inc., Connecticut’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center System.
Dr. Nwando is an international leader and change agent, and has contributed significantly to health care redesign and transformation in the United States, as well as United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. She is also a leader in Health and Social equity, Minority Women’s issues and women’s empowerment, and conceived and curated a national movement in the United States to empower and inspire Minority Women Professionals to excel and advance in their careers. She speaks widely on women’s issues, health disparities, professional development and health care/primary care transformation.
Dr. Nwando is also an avid reader and enjoys writing fiction and non-fiction. She has written 4 books and countless poems, short stories and scientific articles. Dr. Nwando is a proud wife and mother of two children, whom she enjoys nurturing to their full potential. While she is not working, she considers herself the best possible unpaid children’s chauffeur in the world!