Diane Meier Announces April Leadership Transition

Watch a video message from Diane and Brynn.

Dear Colleagues,

With an eye toward the future, I am announcing that on April 15th I will be stepping down from my role as CAPC Director. Brynn Bowman, MPA, CAPC’s Chief Strategy Officer, will succeed me as Executive Director. I will assume a new role as Director Emerita and Strategic Medical Advisor.

Across the country, there is a new generation of talented leaders ready to take palliative care to the next level so that high-quality palliative care is reliably available everywhere a patient might need it, whether at home, in a long-term care residence, a clinician’s practice, or a hospital. To make this model the new normal, however, we need new methods of organizing care delivery, new payment models, new approaches to training the workforce, and new foundational assumptions about health care. We need to shift our focus and our efforts so that we prioritize serving our patients as whole human beings. The ongoing pandemic and highly visible racism in our society has made it even more clear that being seen as a fellow human being is what our patients—all of us—most want and need.

Brynn Bowman exemplifies this new generation of leadership. Like me, she believes that big, structural change in health care on behalf of the most vulnerable patients is necessary—and possible. Joining CAPC seven years ago with a personal passion to improve care for older adults, Brynn rapidly rose through the ranks, serving as our Vice President of Education and currently as our Chief Strategy Officer.

Brynn is a nationally recognized leader in scaling practice and culture change in health care delivery for people with serious illness. An expert in palliative care education, Brynn specializes in health care leadership development; palliative care business and financing; palliative care program design; palliative care education for nonpalliative care specialists; and palliative care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work has been instrumental in equipping the U.S. health care workforce with the skills needed to care for patients with serious illness, and their families.

In 2020, Brynn was selected as a Health and Aging Policy Fellow. In 2019, she was cochair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Roundtable on Quality Care for People with Serious Illness workshop: “Building the Workforce We Need to Care for People with Serious Illness.” In 2016, she was recognized with the Brandon Hall Group Silver Excellence in Learning Award for Best Use of Mobile Learning: CAPC Online Curriculum.

Because of her accomplishments and exemplary track record of leadership, Brynn is the right person to drive CAPC’s next phase of work. She possesses that rare combination of a brilliant strategic mind, a heart full of compassion, and an impressive ability to execute on her vision. It is Brynn and all of our remarkable team of professionals at CAPC that makes our organization so well positioned for the future.

I want to thank all of our funders, members, faculty, and staff for their partnership in this important work. Together, we have built a sturdy foundation to support the journey necessary for transforming care of people with serious illness in our nation’s health care system. I am confident that CAPC’s best years are ahead.

Sincerely,

Diane E. Meier, MD, FACP, FAAHPM