Bechara Choucair, MD
Executive Vice President, Chief Health Officer
Bechara Choucair, MD, a board-certified family physician, serves as executive vice president and chief health officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., and Hospitals, where he leads the organization’s community health and social health portfolios. This includes creating the nation’s largest social health network to help meet the housing, food, and transportation needs of Kaiser Permanente’s members, and managing over $3 billion to support medical financial assistance and charitable health coverage programs as well as grants to community health programs throughout the organization’s footprint.
Dr. Choucair also oversees the organization’s Medicaid line of business covering 1.5 million members, and advances initiatives to increase access to care and improve health outcomes for those enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare.
Additionally, Dr. Choucair’s accountability includes leading enterprise clinical business development opportunities focusing on care delivery models, technologies, and products. He led the development of Habitat Health, an organization that will bring CMS’ Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, known as PACE, to more Kaiser Permanente communities.
He also is accountable for Kaiser Permanente’s environmental stewardship work, which resulted in the organization becoming carbon neutral in 2020, and oversees the organization’s goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
From January through November 2021, Dr. Choucair served as the White House national COVID-19 vaccinations coordinator. Under his leadership, nearly 500 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered nationwide. He returned to Kaiser Permanente in December 2021. Dr. Choucair served as Chicago’s Public Health Commissioner from 2009 to 2014.
Dr. Choucair chairs the board of directors of Maui Health System and is a member of the American University of Beirut International Advisory Council. He has earned a number of local and national awards, including being named by Modern Healthcare as one of the 50 Most Influential Health Executives in the United States, one of the Most Influential People in Healthcare, one of the Top 25 Innovators in Healthcare, and one of the Top 25 Minority Healthcare Executives.
