Executive Biographies

Raymond J. Baxter, PhD

Senior vice president, Community Benefit, Research, and Health Policy

Raymond J. Baxter, PhD, is Kaiser Permanente’s senior vice president for Community Benefit, Research and Health Policy. Dr. Baxter leads the organization’s activities to fulfill its social mission, including care and coverage for low income people, community health initiatives, environmental stewardship and support for community-based organizations, as well as research and the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy.

In addition, he serves as president of Kaiser Permanente International, and in 2004 he served as interim president for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, which serves more than 3 million members.

Dr. Baxter has more than 30 years of experience managing public health, hospital, long-term care and mental health programs, including heading the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Dr. Baxter also led The Lewin Group, a noted health policy firm. Dr. Baxter holds a doctorate from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He serves on the Board of Directors of Grantmakers in Health, the advisory board of the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, the technical board of the Milbank Memorial Fund, the International Advisory Board of the Center for Corporate Citizenship, the National Public Health and Hospital Institute, and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences Expert Panel on Chronic Disease.

In 2001 the UC Berkeley School of Public Health honored him as a Public Health Hero for his service in the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. In September 2006 he received the CDC Foundation Hero Award for addressing the health consequences of Hurricane Katrina by supporting public health teams in the Gulf Coast, and for his longstanding commitment to improving the health of communities.