Christopher J. King, PhD, FACHE is a nationally recognized health systems strategist, educator and thought leader whose expertise is at the nexus of health system transformation, public health, health equity, and health professions education. As inaugural Dean of Georgetown University School of Health, he works with internal and external stakeholders to establish a world class academic destination for advancing health and well-being through innovative research, interdisciplinary education, and transformative engagement with communities. He is responsible for academic and operational leadership of the school which is composed of three Departments – Human Science, Global Health and Health Management and Policy and a growing healthcare graduate degree portfolio.
Prior to his role as Dean, he served as chair of the Department of Health Systems Administration where he provided visionary leadership and oversight of the undergraduate degree in Health Care Management and Policy and a nationally accredited master of science in Health Systems Administration.
As an associate professor, he teaches and contributes to scholarship on the creation of equitable systems of care within the context of national health reform goals. He works closely with public and private providers to bridge the gap between medical care and healthcare. Prior to joining Georgetown University, Christopher served as the first Assistant Vice President of Community Health for MedStar Health, a $6B not-for-profit healthcare system comprised of 10 hospitals in the Baltimore/Washington region. Accomplishments included planning, launching and managing a new corporate function designed to apply more rigor and evidence in community-based planning, implementation and evaluation. He was also responsible for developing, testing and evaluating innovative approaches to integrate social factors in systems of care.
Prior to his work with MedStar Health, Christopher served as a director for Greater Baden Medical Services, Inc., a Federally Qualified Health Center in southern Maryland. During his four-year tenure, he managed federal grants, oversaw support services and secured more than $7M in public and private grants to promote health equity and improve the health of vulnerable and underserved populations. Through volunteer work, he has spearheaded regional efforts to heighten awareness of how racism, discrimination and implicit bias influence individual and population health. Christopher is an active member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and has been a contributor to Healthcare Executive magazine. He has conducted health disparity and health equity presentations to national audiences. And as a former senior fellow of the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET), Christopher represents an esteemed group of national thought leaders dedicated to transforming health care through research and education. His national investigations on screening and barriers to care among cancer survivors by race and ethnicity were published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and the American Journal of Medical Quality. His thought leadership around Black Lives and the Triple Aim has been published in the Journal of the National Medical Association.
Christopher is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and he currently serves on the DC Hospital Association Board of Directors. He has also been an advisor for the DC Department of Health State Innovation Model, Adventist HealthCare's Center for Health Equity and Wellness and the Maryland Governor’s Wellmobile Program. In 2019, he was appointed a Commissioner for the District of Columbia Commission on Health Equity. In 2020, he authored Health Disparities in the Black Community: An Imperative for Racial Equity and most recently, his work on Race, Place and Structural Racism in the District of Columbia was published in Health Affairs – the nation’s leading peer-reviewed journal on health, healthcare and policy.
The Washington Business Journal has recognized him as one of the region’s top minority business leaders.
Christopher has a B.S. in Community Health (East Carolina University), an M.S. in Health Science (Towson University), and a Ph.D. in Health Systems Administration (University of Maryland School of Public Health).