Duke AI Health welcomes Michael Pignone, MD, MPH, who takes the helm of the Duke Collaborative to Advance Health Equity (CACHE) effective October 15, 2024. Currently the Rebecca and John Kirkland Distinguished Professor of Medicine and vice chair of Quality and Innovation in the Duke Department of Medicine, Dr. Pignone also serves as the faculty director for Primary Care Transformation and Innovation within the Margolis Center for Health Policy and the Director for Cancer Screening Equity at the Duke Cancer Institute.

“I am delighted to see Dr. Pignone move into this role,” said Richard Shannon, MD, founding director of CACHE and Chief Quality Officer & Chief Medical Officer for Duke Health.

“The energy he brings to this work and the breadth of his experience, spanning clinical care, research, policy, and population health, make him an ideal choice to build upon our early successes with this initiative and grow the community partnerships vital to our work,” Shannon continued, going on to acknowledge the crucial efforts of CACHE team members Michael Pencina, Michelle Lyn, Shelley Rusincovitch, Armando Bedoya, Ben Goldstein, Nrupren Bhavsar, Jillian Hauser, and Susanna Naggie in starting and sustaining the initiative.

CACHE, founded in February 2021, is a community-driven, multi-disciplinary program that Shannon describes as “a pivotal part of Duke’s ongoing efforts to distill insights from its data, its providers, and from the communities it serves and use that information to identify and eliminate inequities in healthcare and improve outcomes for these communities.”

CACHE uses data from the entire Duke Health system to identify clinical outcomes that significantly impact patient health and well-being, evaluates those outcomes for the presence of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities, and works with patients to understand the underlying factors that drive them. CACHE’s mission is focused on using these insights to enable interventions that address the root causes of disparities inside and beyond the health care system.

CACHE projects to date include efforts to understand and address disparities in cancer screening, hypertension, diabetes, maternal morbidity, and gun violence. As the incoming director for CACHE, Dr. Pignone’s responsibilities will include identifying and supporting new initiatives, supporting faculty development as health equity scholars, and translating successful CACHE projects into sustainable changes in Duke’s care processes.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Pignone in his new role at Duke CACHE!