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A Conversation with Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, Chief Health Officer, Anthem

Dr. Shantanu Agrawal

Chief Health Officer, Anthem

Dr. Agrawal oversees Anthem’s enterprise health strategy, including medical policy and clinical quality, as well as the company’s industry-leading work to address the social drivers of health. He also leads Anthem’s community health strategy and the Anthem Foundation.

He most recently served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a non-profit organization dedicated to working with members of the healthcare community to drive measurable health improvements. He is also the former Deputy Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where he led an effort to improve the physician experience with Medicare and was also was one of the main architects of CMS’s strategy to address the national opioid epidemic. Dr. Agrawal also served as Director of the Center for Program Integrity (CPI), where he was instrumental in launching new initiatives in data transparency and analytics, utilization management and payment models.

Dr. Agrawal serves on the board of the Grameen Foundation and the Presidential Advisory Council of Brown University’s School of Public Health. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine.

Dr. Agrawal completed his undergraduate education at Brown University, medical education at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and clinical training in Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his master’s degree in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University.

A Conversation with Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, Chief Health Officer, Anthem

Anthem’s Chief Health Officer, Shantanu Agrawal, MD, talks to Eric about what the insurer is doing to lessen the effect of social determinants of health (SDOH). He shares the results from Anthem’s recently released report, Driving Our Health: A study exploring health perceptions in America, a national survey of 5,000 U.S. adults. Anthem conducted the study to raise awareness of the impact social drivers such as housing, transportation, and food insecurity have on our health outcomes. View the report at: https://www.thinkanthem.com/wp-content/uploads/Anthem-SDOH-Results-Report.pdf

Shantanu discusses some of the programs Anthem has implemented to ensure its members get the resources they need to live healthy lives. One example he cited was the opening of a locally owned grocery store, Indy Fresh Market, in a food desert in Indianapolis, Indiana. The store was funded by a grant from the Anthem Foundation and the Local Initiatives Support Corp. of Indianapolis.

Dr. Shantanu Agrawal

Chief Health Officer, Anthem

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