Jeffrey Brenner

Jeffrey Brenner is a healthcare and nonprofit leader focused on improving outcomes for vulnerable and complex populations. His career began as a frontline family physician who owned and operated a solo-practice, urban family medicine office in Camden, NJ, one of the most impoverished cities in the country. While living and working in Camden, Dr. Brenner provided full-spectrum family health services for a Medicaid-enrolled population, including home visits, prenatal care, and delivering babies.

Recognizing the need for a new way for hospitals, providers, and community residents to collaborate, he founded what would become the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers in 2002 and served as its CEO from its incorporation in 2006 through 2017. Dr. Brenner’s innovative use of data to identify high-need, high-cost patients in a fragmented system and improve their care was profiled in the 2011 New Yorker article “The Hot Spotters” by writer and surgeon Dr. Atul Gawande, and on PBS Frontline. In 2013 he was honored with the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship for his work, and in 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). In 2016, under his leadership, the Camden Coalition launched the National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs to build and expand the field of Complex Care across the United States.

While continuing to serve as the CEO of the Camden Coalition, in 2012 Dr. Brenner accepted an invitation from a local hospital to jointly reorganize and co-lead its urban outpatient hospital clinics, which provide care across 18 medical and surgical specialties. Using a start-up grant from a foundation to hire a business improvement team, the Urban Health Institute was able to double the clinical volume to 40,000 visits, reduce the cost of care, substantially improve the financial margins, and demonstrate measurable improvements in quality outcomes. The team also launched a highly successful inpatient and outpatient addiction treatment program which brought addiction services to the emergency room, hospital floors, and pregnant mothers experiencing addiction.

From 2017 to 2020, as a Senior Vice President at United Healthcare, Dr. Brenner co-developed and jointly scaled a national program to provide housing and support services to complex Medicaid members experiencing homelessness in over 22 states. The program reduced healthcare costs by 10% and was profiled in Bloomberg Businessweek in 2019.

At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, Dr. Brenner volunteered to co-launch and jointly run a COVID recovery center in a hotel in Secaucus, New Jersey for the New Jersey Department of Health.

Dr. Brenner is an experienced public speaker who has delivered keynote addresses at conferences and meetings such as the National Governors Association. As an Adjunct Professor, Dr. Brenner taught a course in population health for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science at Dartmouth College. He has authored peer-reviewed research in the field of Complex Care and has taught at various medical schools.

Dr. Brenner holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Vassar College, and graduated from the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He completed a family medicine residency in Seattle, Washington.