Mental health during a pandemic

Dr. William Kassler, Deputy Health Officer, and Lead Population Health Officer, at IBM Watson Health, discusses his recently published perspective “Protecting Mental Health During a Pandemic”. He also authored another report for the IBM Institute for Business Value “ How Technology and Data Can Improve Access to Mental Health Resources”.

William J. Kassler, MD, MPHDr. Kassler has spent his career working at the intersection of clinical care and population health; as a practicing primary care internist, epidemiologist, health services researcher, public sector administrator, and health policy expert.  Dr. Kassler currently works at IBM Watson Health as Deputy Chief Health Officer and Lead Health Officer for Population Health, using big data, advanced analytics and AI to tackle the world’s most pressing health challenges. Prior to joining Watson Health, he served as Chief Medical Officer for the New England Region of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and was a founding member in the CMS Innovation Center creating value-based purchasing initiatives to improve population health.   Before that, he served as the State Health Officer for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, with leadership and administrative roles in public health, social services, and Medicaid. Dr. Kassler started his career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an EIS officer, later serving as a medical epidemiologist, Branch Chief for Health Services Research and Evaluation, and as Senior Advisor for health policy in the CDC/Washington Office. He received his MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, an MS in nutrition from Case Western Reserve University, an MPH from Berkeley.  He completed a primary care internal medicine residency at Brown and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kassler has been recognized with numerous awards from the United States Public Health Service, including the Surgeon General’s Meritorious Service Award. He is a recipient of the NH March of Dimes Physician Leadership Award, and the Bi-State Primary Care Association President’s Award. He is a practicing internist at a Federally Qualified Health Center and past president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.