Dr. Kyu (“Q”) Rhee is a mission-driven physician leader, educator, scientist, and innovator who has led and developed transdisciplinary teams across and within the nonprofit, public, and private sectors to make the health system better, especially for underserved communities.
Recognized as one of Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare 2025 and as one of Becker’s Healthcare’s Great Leaders in Healthcare for 2026, Dr. Rhee serves as the President and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). Since the nation’s first community health centers (CHCs) opened in 1965, CHCs have become the best part of our health system, delivering high-quality, affordable, patient-governed primary care for communities across our nation. With 330K employed serving 52 million people in over 17K locations, CHCs provide value-based care to patients, regardless of ability to pay, in every state, U.S. territory, and the District of Columbia.
Dr. Rhee also serves as a member of the Milken Institute’s Public Health Advisory Council and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Healthcare Advisory Committee (HAC), where he chairs the committee’s Improving Care for Vulnerable Populations Working Group.
Prior to joining NACHC, Dr. Rhee held the position of Senior Vice President & Aetna Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health, where he led a team of over 1,500 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals in the integration and delivery of clinical and population health solutions to improve health for up to 65M people. Before CVS Health, Dr. Rhee was the Chief Health Officer of IBM for a decade, where he had global responsibilities for IBM’s efforts to transform health through the use of data, analytics, artificial intelligence, services, and research for providers, health plans, employers, governments, and life science companies across the world.
During the exciting time of the Affordable Care and Recovery Acts, Dr. Rhee served in the public sector at HHS as Chief Public Health Officer of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which is the primary federal agency for improving access to health care services for people who are uninsured or medically vulnerable, and the Director of the Office of Innovation and Program Coordination at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the primary federal agency for research.
Before his public service, Dr. Rhee worked in the nonprofit sector as a National Health Service Corps physician and Chief Medical Officer for CHCs in the Washington, DC/Baltimore area. He served as Chief Resident and did his medical residency training in internal medicine & pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with dual-board certification. He earned his MD from USC, a Master in Health Policy from Harvard, and a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale, where he also served as President of the student body.
