Kara Odom Walker

Kara Odom Walker, MD, MPH, MSHS, is executive vice president and chief population health officer for Nemours Children’s Health System. She leads Nemours National Office of Policy and Prevention, as well as all aspects of population health strategy, research, innovation and implementation. Dr. Walker was Secretary of the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services from 2017 to 2020. As Secretary, she chaired the Health Fund Advisory Council and was a member of the Delaware Health Care Commission and the Delaware Center for Health Innovation Board. Dr. Walker previously worked as the deputy chief science officer at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

Dr. Walker is a board-certified practicing family physician and is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Prior to joining PCORI, she was a faculty member of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed her family medicine residency at the University of California San Francisco, graduated with a Masters of Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Masters of Health Services Research from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health, where she also completed her fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program.