Herminia Palacio ’87, MD, MPH

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has appointed Dr. Herminia Palacio as the city’s new deputy mayor for health and human services, filling a post that has been vacant since the end of September 2015. Palacio will oversee several key city departments, including the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, NYC Health + Hospitals, the Human Resources Administration and the Department of Homeless Services, among others.

Most recently Dr. Palacio served as director and senior program officer, Human Capital and Leadership Teams for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Dr. Palacio has  held a number of academic appointments, including Adjunct Professor in Management, Policy, and Community Health at the University Of Texas School Of Public Health at Houston since 2006. She also taught at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. She received her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1987, and holds a Masters of Public Health, with a specialty in epidemiology, from the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, and a BA in biology from Barnard College at Columbia University. She completed the distinguished RWJF Harold Amos Program in 1999. Palacio did her primary care internal medical residency at San Francisco General Hospital.