Sunil Kripalani, MD, MSc, SFHM, FACP

Dr. Kripalani is Professor of Medicine and Health Policy and Vice President for Health System Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He directs the Center for Health Services Research, which supports a broad portfolio of research and training programs that seek to improve health care delivery and health outcomes by optimizing quality, value, equity, and patient-centered care. He is active in developing VUMC’s growing learning health system through funded research and partnerships between investigators and health system initiatives.

Dr. Kripalani is an applied implementation scientist whose research interests include health communication, medication safety, care transitions, social determinants of health, implementation of evidence-based practice, and de-implementation of low-value care. He serves as a PI on three NIH-funded studies to implement social drivers of health, genomic discoveries, and predictive models into clinical practice. Dr. Kripalani also co-leads VUMC’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative, which is expanding organizational capacity for improvement, implementation, and data science to support the translation of patient-centered research evidence into practice. He has served as the PI or lead implementation science mentor on several postdoctoral research fellowships and faculty career development programs. He supports implementation science activities for the Vanderbilt CTSA and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and leads the research committee of the STAR Clinical Research Network. Dr. Kripalani serves on the AHRQ National Advisory Council and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Hospital Medicine. He previously founded and served as Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine at Vanderbilt, Director of the Center for Clinical Quality and Implementation Research, and Co-Director of the Center for Effective Health Communication.

Dr. Kripalani graduated from Rice University, received his MD from Baylor College of Medicine, and trained in Internal Medicine at Emory University, where he also completed a Hospital Medicine Fellowship and a Master of Science in Clinical Research. His research has been funded by the NIH, AHRQ, PCORI, and CMS.