Dr. Jennifer Lee is a Clinical Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and a Visiting Scholar at the National Academy of Medicine where her work focuses on assessing the current COVID-19 pandemic response and developing recommendations for reforms to the health care system. Dr. Lee is also a frequent commentator on CNN and has served as a CNN Medical Analyst during the coronavirus pandemic.
She previously served as the Director of the Medicaid program for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where she oversaw a $12 billion program and led a critical expansion to extend health insurance to over 350,000 additional low-income Virginians. Previously, she served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Policy and Services at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. There she was responsible for overseeing national policy and leading key initiatives for the nation’s largest integrated health care system, with more than 1,200 sites of care serving more than 9 million veterans. From 2014-16, Dr. Lee served as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Resources for Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
Dr. Lee has also served as a White House Fellow and a health policy fellow on the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. She received her bachelor’s from Yale University, her medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine, and completed her residency at Johns Hopkins University. She is a board-certified, practicing emergency physician and is also an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow.