Veronica Vela
Adjunct Professorial Lecturer
Health Studies
Degrees
Doctorate of Public Health, George Washington University Masters in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of California, Berkeley Bachelors in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Favorite Place in Washington DC
Rock Creek Park
Bio
Veronica X. Vela, DrPH, MEngr, is a health system leader focused on improving the health and well-being of populations and communities. Her work centers around attuning health services to address the needs, values, and preferences of patients and their families. Her expertise includes leading teams to evaluate, design, and implement care models to enhance the patient experience, improve population health, respond to mass-casualty disasters, and address social determinants of health. She combines public health problem framing, mixed-methods research, human-centered design, and systems thinking to understand and address complex health challenges.
Dr. Vela is currently teaching at American University in the Department of Health Studies and is a Scholar in Residence, where she advises and collaborates with organizations on how to cultivate a more equitable and nutritious food system to improve health in urban cities. Prior, Dr. Vela served as a Senior Director at Ascension, where she developed healthcare services and solutions to improve health outcomes across 19 states and the District of Columbia. She also served as the Director of Community Health Design + Innovation at Johns Hopkins Medicine. In this role she led Ward Infinity, a social innovation accelerator to address social determinants of health in Washington, D.C. 's most underserved communities. She also led regional studies and participated in workgroups to improve healthcare delivery for underserved communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Throughout her career, Dr. Vela has led portfolios of national and regional consulting projects to improve care for broad and unique populations. The projects evaluated, improved, and created new models of care across a variety of service lines and conditions, including primary care, chronic care, HIV care, mental healthcare, hospice care, telemedicine care, and women’s health. After 9-11, she worked with the U.S. military, federal and local governments, and private sector hospitals to improve our nation's response to mass casualty disasters, such as terrorist attacks. Dr. Vela also served as a Human Innovation Fellow with the U.S. Government assigned to the Veterans Administration. There she led a national patient experience research and design initiative that ignited an enterprise transformation to improve how Veterans experience care at over 1,200 medical facilities.
Dr. Vela serves on the Board of Directors of La Clinica Del Pueblo, a federally qualified health center serving Latino/a/x communities in Washington DC and Maryland, and sits on the Advisory Council of Ward Infinity, the social innovation accelerator she led for Johns Hopkins Medicine.
