A Medical Career Spent in Service of Improving Health Disparities

Lloyd Dean, president and CEO, CommonSpirit Health

Growing up, Lloyd Dean saw the impact of health disparities in his own community. His experiences motivated him to use his formidable leadership abilities to change things for the better. He will retire this summer after a long and impactful career.

“Imagine 11 people in a house of three bedrooms and being on welfare when the factories would shut down,” Dean says. “I just wanted a better life for my parents and for my family and for my community, and that motivation always stuck with me. And I knew as I got older, that to achieve that, people would have to live — so that became a part of the driver of the passion for health care.”

Dean took the helm as CEO of Dignity Health in 2000. In February 2019, Dignity Health and CHI merged to form CommonSpirit Health, now one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the U.S., with care sites in 21 states. Dean and CHI’s CEO Kevin Lofton shared leadership of the new organization as co-CEOs until Lofton’s planned retirement in January 2020.

The past few years have been a reckoning for health care. As of this writing, the number of COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. passed one million, a chilling milestone. Dean reflects, “If we only take away one thing from the pandemic, it should be that the healthier our community is, the healthier my neighbor is, the more likely I am to remain healthy.”

Many of the problems Dean faced growing up in an African American community in Michigan are the same ones he has spent his career trying to eliminate. With his planned retirement this summer fast approaching, he shared his thoughts on what he believes the priorities of health and health care should be in our country.

Read the full story now and learn more: A Champion for the Common Good

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President