Dr. Shereef Elnahal is President and CEO of University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey’s largest safety net hospital with over 500 licensed beds and $738.2 million in patient service revenue. The hospital serves as the main academic medical center for Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, both in Newark.

Previously, Dr. Elnahal served as New Jersey’s 21st Commissioner of Health.

He joined the Department of Health (DOH) in January 2018 and quickly established a new vision for the Department with specific goals: Eradicating the opioid epidemic; decreasing maternal mortality and improving access to women’s health care; reducing disparities in public health outcomes, increasing access to health coverage and mental health care; expanding the medicinal marijuana program; and expanding telehealth and interoperability.

Women’s health is a key priority for Dr. Elnahal. Early in the Administration of Governor Phil Murphy, the Governor signed legislation restoring $7.5 million in DOH funding for family planning. Dr. Elnahal also directed funding for a new Healthy Women-Healthy Families Initiative focused on increasing healthy births and decreasing black infant mortality in communities with the highest black infant mortality rates.

Dr. Elnahal also managed significant reforms in the medicinal marijuana program, reducing patient and caregiver registration fees, allowing dispensaries to add satellite locations, and adding mobile access so that patients, caregivers and physicians can register, make payments and upload documents on their smartphones and tablets.

Prior to his DOH nomination, Dr. Elnahal worked as a physician executive in the largest health care system in the country — the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).  As the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Quality, Safety, and Value, he managed a workforce of hundreds and a budget of more than $180 million.

While serving at the VA, he was selected by President Barack Obama as a White House Fellow in 2015. At the VA, he spearheaded unprecedented efforts around transparency in access and performance, as well as standardizing best practices that prevent opioid dependency, improve women’s healthcare, and enhance access to care for veterans.

He grew up in Atlantic County and is the son of doctors who immigrated to New Jersey from Egypt. He received a dual-degree M.D. and M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard University, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University.