ASU selects Susan M. Pepin to lead new health initiatives

Arizona State University announced today that it has selected Dr. Susan M. Pepin, an educator, surgeon and clinician, to lead a series of new health initiatives aimed at improving health outcomes at scale and growing clinical partnerships.

Pepin will join ASU on Aug. 1 as managing director of health and clinical partnerships, senior adviser to the executive vice president, and clinical professor in the College of Health Solutions.

ASU, already a leader in health and health-care initiatives by training health-care workers, cultivating life-changing research and developing new blueprints and missions for people and organizations that impact health and health care, seeks to take that work further by:

• Launching a broad-based initiative to virtually link clinical providers in the state and create a data aggregator that will allow health-care experts and providers to analyze public health issues and develop individual and collaborative solutions to affect health outcomes at scale.

• Growing graduate medical education in collaboration with health partners; strengthen the delineation of and support for multiple pathways to health-related careers; foster access to health careers while emphasizing diversity and success; and intentionally match workforce needs to student programming opportunities.

• Further integrating and leveraging the Health Futures Council into all of ASU’s health and health-care-related initiatives.

• Coordinating and expanding local and clinical partnerships to open adjacent possibilities and define a new model for other regions/areas.

• Fostering connection of the interdisciplinary efforts of research, discovery and development to transcend academic disciplines in order to design solutions addressing grand health challenges.

“Dr. Pepin is a brilliant systems thinker who has the vision and skills to forge new territory for our health initiatives,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, executive vice president and chief research and innovation officer at ASU. “These efforts come at a critical time when technology, partnerships and new thinking and energy can provide opportunities for health outcomes at scale.”

Pepin comes to ASU from Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, where she has served as president and CEO since 2014. She previously served as associate dean for diversity and inclusion and associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, where she is known for diversifying the medical school’s student body. With specialization in neuro-ophthalmology and pediatric ophthalmology, she provided expert care to patients. She worked as a teacher, clinician and surgeon for more than 14 years and mentored hundreds of students and residents through the admissions process and throughout their journeys in becoming physicians.

“I am thrilled to join ASU and help further its tremendous efforts in health care and medical education already underway. ASU’s emphasis on transdisciplinary, innovative approaches to addressing problems is the perfect environment to scale health care solutions at the global level,” Pepin said.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University; a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from University of Oxford; a Doctor of Medicine from University of California, San Francisco; and a Master of Public Health from Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. She is a 1987 Rhodes Scholar.