Outstanding Leadership in Queens
2019 Honoree of the Queens Federation of Churches

Dr. Mitchell H. Katz

Dr. Mitchell H. Katz (born 1960, also known as Mitch Katz) is the CEO of NYC Health and Hospitals, the largest public health care system in the United States.

Dr. Katz was raised in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of three children. Both his brother and sister are developmentally disabled.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Yale University and received a medical degree at Harvard Medical School. In 1989, he completed his residency in internal medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

After his residency, Dr. Katz remained in San Francisco. In 1991, he joined the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), serving as chief of research and director of the AIDS Office, director of the Emergency Medical Services Agency and director of the department’s health and safety branch.

From 1997 to 2010, he served as the Director of Health and Health Officer for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, where he implemented the Healthy San Francisco program, which is the United States’ first municipal universal health care system.

During his tenure, Dr. Katz also served as a medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics professor at the University of California, San Francisco, while operating an outpatient practice at San Francisco General Hospital’s Positive Healthcare Practice.

In 2010, he was recruited by the Los Angeles County Chief Executive OfficerWilliam T. Fujioka to lead the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. In 2012, he was awarded the National Center for Healthcare Leadership’s Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award for his contributions to the health care field. On November 24, 2015, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors appointed Katz as the Director of the Los Angeles County Health Agency. Mitchell Katz is deputy editor of the scientific journal JAMA Internal Medicine. He and his partner, Igael Gurin-Malous have two children, Maxwell and Roxie, who were adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam.