Bechara Choucair, MD
Senior Vice President and Chief Health Officer
Kaiser Permanente
Oakland, CA
Bechara Choucair, MD, is Senior Vice President and Chief Health Officer for Kaiser Permanente.
Dr. Choucair oversees the organization’s efforts to address the social health of its 12.5 million members and the 68 million people who live in the communities it serves. This work includes the creation of the nation’s largest social health network, integrated with Kaiser Permanente’s health care services, to meet the housing, food and transportation needs of its members.
Additionally, Dr. Choucair manages Kaiser Permanente’s community health portfolio, including medical financial assistance and charitable care as well as grants and community health initiatives. He is also responsible for the organization’s environmental stewardship work leading to Kaiser Permanente becoming carbon neutral in 2020. As Chief Health Officer, he is also accountable for the care of over 1 million Kaiser Permanente Medicaid members and those dually enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare.
From January through November 2021, Dr. Choucair served as the White House National Vaccinations Coordinator. In that role he focused on coordinating the timely, safe and equitable administration of COVID-19 vaccinations for the U.S. population, in close partnership with relevant federal departments and agencies, and state and local authorities, health systems and community-based organizations. During his tenure as Vaccinations Coordinator, more than 450 million doses of the vaccine were administered nationwide. He returned to Kaiser Permanente in December 2021.
Before joining Kaiser Permanente in 2016, Dr. Choucair was at Trinity Health, where he served as senior vice president of safety net and community health. He worked directly with Trinity Health’s regions to improve the health of populations and impact the community-based social determinants of health. He was responsible for developing new care delivery models and new relationships with payers, public health agencies and community organizations. Dr. Choucair and his team led the organization’s community benefit portfolio of approximately $1 billion annually. He also launched Trinity Health’s Transforming Communities Initiative to transform the health and well-being of communities across the country.
Dr. Choucair has served on numerous boards, including Change Lab Solutions, National Healthcare for the Homeless Council, Futuro Health and other organizations. He is the author of Precision Community Health, a guide for public health innovation in policy, big data, media and community partnerships to improve health for all.
A family physician by training, Dr. Choucair holds an MD from the American University of Beirut and a master’s degree in health care management from the University of Texas at Dallas. He completed his family residency at Baylor College of Medicine.