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Dr. Shereef Elnahal is a physician leader and expert in health care delivery to dual-eligible patients, with multiple leadership experiences serving vulnerable communities. He is currently Executive Health Advisor at Thrive Capital, and engages with firms large and small on how to remain competitive in an era of unprecedented innovation in health care delivery.
Before this, he was appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and confirmed by the US Senate on July 21, 2022. In this role, he lead the largest integrated health system in the nation alongside a team of nearly 400,000 professionals, delivering world-class care to 9 million enrolled Veterans.
Dr. Elnahal has overseen the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) implementation of the Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, the largest expansion of Veteran benefits and care in a generation. More than two years since the law, VA has enrolled more than 800,000 new Veterans into health care, the majority of whom had exposure to toxic substances, and upgraded health care coverage for more than 900,000 Veterans already enrolled in VA. Despite this large increase in demand, he has also improved access to care by growing appointment volumes, expanding infrastructure through innovative partnerships with top medical institutions and the Department of Defense, and more. VHA is now better staffed with clinicians that at any point in its history after he initiated system-wide hiring and retention initiatives, which also helped reduce average wait times for primary care and mental health 5% and 15% respectively. He has grown care delivery in all appointment types, and improved overall care productivity by 9% in two years. He has also advanced care access for women Veterans, including extending maternity care coordination benefits for up to one year after birth for Veteran mothers in an effort to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, and enrolling more than 50,000 new women Veterans into healthcare over the last year.

He has also focused on ending the scourge of Veteran suicide, implementing a new policy in which VA covers the costs of care for any Veteran in suicidal crisis (not just those enrolled for VA healthcare), and has advanced VA’s research in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to unprecedented levels. Under his leadership, VA is now funding psychedelics studies for the first time since the 1960s, and has gained bipartisan support in Congress for more funding to do multi-site clinical trials on MDMA, psilocybin, and other psychedelics agents combined with novel models of psychotherapy.
Under Dr. Elnahal’s leadership, VA has also made progress in placing record numbers of homeless Veterans into permanent housing. In FY2024, VA housed nearly 48,000 homeless Veterans, leading to a 7.5% reduction in Veteran homelessness since 2023. Veteran homelessness is now at the lowest level overall since measurement began in 2009. He is also co-leading the agency’s efforts on generative artificial intelligence, focusing on use cases that reduce clinician burnout.
Prior to his role at VA, Dr. Elnahal served as President and Chief Executive Officer of University Hospital in Newark, NJ. University Hospital is a Level I trauma center, the principal academic medical center for Rutgers NJ Medical School, and New Jersey’s only public hospital serving a large population of dual-eligible patients. Elnahal led University Hospital through the COVID-19 public health emergency, and the hospital served as a model for urban and regional response efforts. In addition, Governor Phil Murphy tasked the hospital with coordinating regional pandemic response efforts across dozens of hospitals in northern NJ, as well as with activating a military field hospital alongside the National Guard. In addition to his leadership during the pandemic, Dr. Elnahal oversaw substantial improvements in care quality and patient safety at the hospital, leading to improvements against national benchmarks. He also turned around the hospital financially, moving from significant operating losses to a healthy surplus. He engaged the community meaningfully in the hospital’s programming, to include a partnership the NJ Housing and Mortgage Financing Authority to provide supportive housing to homeless patients; a hospital-based violence intervention program that has served as a national model; and a program that deploys trusted chaplains to serve as community health workers.

Prior to his time at University Hospital, Elnahal served as New Jersey’s 21st Health Commissioner, appointed to the state Cabinet post by Governor Phil Murphy and confirmed unanimously by the New Jersey Senate, serving during the first two years of the Murphy administration. As Health Commissioner, he was responsible for running the state’s four psychiatric hospitals, and made strides in improving quality, patient safety, and outcomes for New Jersey’s most vulnerable patients requiring mental health inpatient hospitalization. He also expanded the New Jersey Health Information Network, worked to improve infant and maternal health outcomes, and made strides in curbing the opioid epidemic.
Dr. Elnahal also served as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Quality, Safety, and Value at the US Department of Veterans Affairs from 2016 through 2018, overseeing quality of care for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). He co-founded the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, a program that continues to foster the spread of innovation and best practices that improve Veteran care across the nation.

Dr. Elnahal received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School. His perspective on the American health care system’s COVID-19 response, including on matters of health equity, has been featured on national media outlets including Fox Business, CNN, and the New York Times.