Barbara Kivowitz, MSW

Barbara is a clinician, consultant, and author specializing in healthcare innovation with the goal of helping organizations shift to more patient/family centered models of care. She is the coauthor of Love in the Time of Chronic Illness: How to Fight the Sickness, Not Each Other, a guide for patient-caregiver partners and for the clinicians who help them. She has delivered programs based on her book at Stanford Health Care and Medical School, UCSF, Sutter Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Center, the Beryl Institute, and elsewhere. She is also a frequent speaker at conferences for patient-caregiver groups and for clinicians.

Barbara is a dedicated advocate for including the voices of patients and families in all aspects of healthcare and social care.  As a Sutter Health patient family advisor at the system level and at CPMC, she is on the Board of Directors of Sutter Health Medical Direct which oversees care for Medicare patients, the Network Performance Advisory Committee, the CINAC (Clinically Integrated Network Committee),  the Chiefs of Staff Council, the Acute Care Patient Experience Committee, the Joy of Work Committee, The Social Drivers of Health Executive Steering Committee, the CPMC Patient Experience Council, the Research Department, and more. She designed a  behavioral patient-to-patient program in partnership with the Sutter Patient Engagement team (PACT: Partnering Actively with Your Care Team) for patients and families to provide them with guidance for creating positive partnerships with their care team, which also affects clinician wellbeing.

Barbara is also on the Board of Directors of San Francisco Village, an intentional community of older adults. She is on the Honorary Board of Well Spouse Organization, on the Advisory Board of Patient and Family Centered Care Partners, and on the Technical Advisory Committee for California Health Compares. She participates in national patient/family focused health initiatives through the American College of Physicians, the National Institute on Aging, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the PCORI Advisory Panel on Healthcare Delivery and Disparities Research.

She previously led the innovation practice for a Research and Development group within Lotus/IBM, provided innovation consulting to large healthcare organizations and to the State of Vermont, and worked as a clinical social worker in community based settings and as an advocate with Spanish-speaking refugee populations. She has graduate degrees from Harvard and Simmons Universities, and speaks five languages.