William J. Kassler MD, MPH

William Kassler, MD, MPH, is currently Deputy Health Officer and Lead Population Health Officer at IBM Watson Health. Prior to that, he served as Chief Medical Officer for the New England Region of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where he worked with the CMS Innovation Center implement value-based purchasing initiatives to improve population health outcomes. Dr. Kassler has served as State Health Officer and Medical Director for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, with leadership roles in both public health and Medicaid, and his priorities were integrating population-based public health strategies and preventive services into clinical care through programmatic collaboration between public health and Medicaid. He also worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an EIS Officer, medical epidemiologist, director of a health services research and evaluation unit, and Senior Advisor for health policy in the CDC/Washington Office.

Dr. Kassler received his MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, completed a primary care internal medicine residency at the Rhode Island Hospital, and is board certified in internal medicine. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar in health services research at the University of California, San Francisco. He received an MS in nutrition from CaseWestern Reserve University and an MPH from Berkeley.

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 for “unyielding dedication to community-based access to care for the poor and disadvantaged.” Dr. Kassler is a practicing internist at a Federally Qualified Health Center and past president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.