{"id":425006,"date":"2026-01-23T12:55:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T12:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425006\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T12:55:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T12:55:40","slug":"shereef-elnahal-has-a-hopeful-vision-for-ohsu-and-oregon-should-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425006\/","title":{"rendered":"Shereef Elnahal Has a Hopeful Vision for OHSU and Oregon. Should We?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is Dr. Shereef Elnahal, slipping disposable blue booties over his shoes to enter a suburban laboratory. There he is dining with Dr. Brian Druker, the famous leukemia scientist. Here goes Elnahal roaming the halls of Salem. (\u201cSmart,\u201d says state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, recounting a first impression.) Now he\u2019s got some words for the Metro Council. He keeps the speech brief; mainly, it seems as if he\u2019s just come to say hello.<\/p>\n

Elnahal, 40, the new president of Oregon Health & Science University, began his work in August, and since then he has proven charming, clever and, above all, omnipresent.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see him everywhere,\u201d says Dr. Maria Rodriguez, the faculty representative on the OHSU board. \u201cI see him walking down the hall. I see him on the tram. I see him in the cafeteria. Other people do, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, Elnahal\u2019s frequent staff forums and peppy weekly recap messages from Marquam Hill have not stopped some fraction of OHSU\u2019s 22,000 employees from seeing him as a distant and overpaid suit.<\/p>\n

But even skeptics grant he\u2019s an open and gifted communicator, and he\u2019s widely seen as a politics and health policy ace. More importantly, to many at OHSU, it seems he\u2019s listening, like he cares, like he wants to be their champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gave me hope,\u201d Rodriguez says of meeting with him. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018I haven\u2019t felt optimistic or hopeful in a really long time!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Elnahal will need every bit of that goodwill. He must increasingly make hard, messy decisions\u2014they are financial, political, administrative, existential\u2014that will test and ultimately eclipse any early impressions.<\/p>\n

Whether he succeeds matters far beyond the contours of Pill Hill. OHSU is Portland\u2019s largest employer and the state\u2019s sole academic medical center. It trains many of the health care professionals who will go on to serve in Oregon, draws billions in federal funds, and offers complex care unavailable anywhere else in the state.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Elnahal arrives at a moment of considerable uncertainty for OHSU.<\/p>\n

Indeed, if it is the state\u2019s health care flagship, a hearty storm is at hand, and the task before Elnahal is to rally morale, set a course, and deliver on a vision to pass beyond the gale-force headwinds of President Donald Trump\u2014and Oregon\u2019s own economic doldrums.<\/p>\n

WW interviewed Elnahal on various occasions in recent months, including throughout a crisp October day that began in a nondescript Beaverton office park, a factory for very expensive drugs.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s got those blue booties on. So does everyone else. Yen Pham, OHSU\u2019s chief pharmacy officer, is telling her new boss about the virtues of something called home infusion: administering these drugs in a nontraditional setting. \u201cThe patients love it,\u201d she says, touting the convenience, how it saves hospital bed space and money too. Elnahal repeats this back, perhaps imagining conveying the message to a congressman. (The feds, Pham notes, have been slow to embrace the practice.)<\/p>\n

Now doors open to a brightly lit room, releasing an antiseptic rubbing alcohol scent. Machines quietly hum. The techs wear white lab coats. Elnahal offers an elbow bump and introduces himself: Shereef.<\/p>\n

Then, onward to a carpeted lobby, where Elnahal asks the receptionist if she has any advice. \u201cNot anything I can think of,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re kind of doing it already\u2014getting out and meeting people. It was weird that nobody ever really talked to or saw the guy before you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the next room, a cubicle to the right is decked out in AFSCME green. Elnahal approaches warmly. The fellow, not so warm, informs Elnahal that he\u2019s on the union bargaining team and that \u201cI\u2019d love a contract.\u201d<\/p>\n

To which Elnahal responds, \u201cHey, great! Me too.\u201d<\/p>\n

OHSU is perhaps not one ship but a fleet of dozens.<\/p>\n

Presiding at the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics is Dr. Susan Hayflick, who has spent much of the past three decades investigating and treating a set of rare children\u2019s neurodegenerative disorders. \u201cWe are the go-to site worldwide,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dr. Susan Hayflick (JP Bogan) <\/p>\n

As for many Oregonians, this kind of fact makes Hayflick proud. It\u2019s a pride money can\u2019t buy, the kind that makes people want to show up for work. Hayflick thinks OHSU is a remarkable place. She\u2019s gotten offers to go elsewhere, she says, and time and again she\u2019s chosen to stay.<\/p>\n

Yet certain developments in recent years have \u201cmade me not proud of the institution.\u201d She\u2019s referring here specifically to the case of a doctor who was found to have secretly photographed female students, and the inept blame-casting response of senior administration\u2014a saga of fuck-ups later documented in great detail by a private OHSU-hired investigator.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy,\u201d Hayflick wondered, \u201cdo we have to hide, hide, hide, hide, hide, and then hire an expert to come tell us what we should have been talking about all along?\u201d<\/p>\n

To what extent poor morale at OHSU can be attributed to the six-year presidency of Dr. Danny Jacobs is debatable. A world-altering pandemic did not help, nor did tanking public faith in the health care profession as a whole. But undeniably, the drip-drip of OHSU\u2019s ugly business in the news, and the aloof distance and outright dishonesty of the Jacobs regime, sapped trust to new lows.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecisions were being made by a very small number of people in a room somewhere,\u201d Hayflick says. And they were communicated quite poorly\u2014if they were communicated at all.<\/p>\n

\"\"Steve Stadum (Andrew Schwartz) <\/p>\n

Steve Stadum got a distress call in fall 2024. Jacobs had resigned, and the board of directors needed an interim leader while it sought a permanent replacement. Stadum, whose 17-year run at OHSU had ended in 2016, had just retired from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. But he felt a duty: \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel right to say no.\u201d<\/p>\n

By early 2025, OHSU veteran Tim Goldfarb had also returned, to fill in as the health system\u2019s interim CEO. \u201cSteve called me and said, \u2018Wow, this is not like when you and I worked there. People don\u2019t trust each other,\u2019\u201d Goldfarb recalls. \u201c\u2018They don\u2019t trust leadership. They don\u2019t think leadership is telling them the truth.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Difficulties persisted. Druker, the eminent scientist, had resigned as head of the Knight Cancer Institute in late 2024, saying OHSU had forgotten its mission and lost its research edge. Department of Government Efficiency funding cuts darkened the mood further. Meanwhile, a slow-cooking plan to merge with crosstown rival Legacy Health collapsed in May 2025\u2014a \u201cmutual decision,\u201d Stadum says, that reflected the deterioration of the health care operating environment.<\/p>\n

Still, not all developments were glum. Courts tended to block those DOGE cuts. The interim chiefs scrounged funds to expand OHSU\u2019s overflowing emergency department. In August, Phil and Penny Knight made a mighty $2 billion gift to back cancer care, marking Druker\u2019s return to leadership.<\/p>\n

That momentous news became public days after Stadum\u2019s tenure officially ended. At the announcement event on the South Waterfront, a young fellow, the new guy, was smiling, making the rounds, shaking hands.<\/p>\n

Elnahal is a son of Egyptian immigrant doctors and the Jersey shore. Kane Kim, a college buddy from Johns Hopkins, describes him as an agile, expansive and open-minded thinker, possessed of an exploratory zeal. (\u201cAlso, he could slap the bass.\u201d) One time, Kim recalls, the old friend group was on an adventure in Tunisia when the rental car ran aground on the side of the road, marooning them in salt flats. Some grew agitated. Elnahal laughed uproariously. Then he led the group to push the car back onto the road.<\/p>\n

Marwa Kamel met Elnahal in 2013. After she helped her family buy a used car, the dealer got in touch to inform her that she and his nephew might get along. She\u2019d immigrated from Egypt as a teen and was now living around D.C., having just wrapped up a master\u2019s degree in environmental sustainability.<\/p>\n

Elnahal, having studied medicine and business at Harvard, had returned to Johns Hopkins for his oncology residency. During their courtship, he came down from Baltimore. \u201cWe would get nerdy, use math equations to explain things in real life,\u201d Kamel says. They got married the next year.<\/p>\n

Kamel says her husband, who jumped early from clinical to systems-level work, is drawn to the idea of institutional turnaround. She\u2019s wary of politics, so often a den of mischief. She believes Elnahal, in contrast, sees a \u201cchess game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Dr. Shereef Elnahal (JP Bogan) <\/p>\n

Following a series of Department of Veterans Affairs gigs in the Obama administration, Elnahal, at 32, became New Jersey\u2019s youngest-ever health commissioner. Then he took the top job at the main county hospital in Newark\u2014a surprising choice. As the state\u2019s largest newspaper put it, Elnahal\u2019s \u201cmeteoric rise\u201d suggested a coming CEO job at a major hospital network. \u201cInstead, he chose the Sisyphean assignment at University Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lengthy article, practically incandescent with praise, describes \u201ca leader like Newark has never seen\u201d who won over skeptics to turn around an institution wracked with deep-rooted challenges. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka told the paper that, where he barely ever spoke to most hospital executives, he and Elnahal talked multiple times a month.<\/p>\n

At 37, Elnahal became President Joe Biden\u2019s undersecretary for health at the VA, overseeing the care of 9 million people.<\/p>\n

Running an operation at such a scale, he says he learned to lead more by influence, by setting a vision staff could believe in. He presided over a massive expansion in VA enrollment. He also hit some bumps. An audit found he\u2019d neglected to tell his boss about millions in bonuses routed to senior executives\u2014a VA scandal that led Republican lawmakers in 2024 to call for his resignation. (Elnahal says he took accountability for the mistake.)<\/p>\n

In any case, Trump\u2019s return meant that by early 2025 he was out of a job. In the wilderness for a few months, he popped in as an adviser on health care at Thrive Capital, the venture capital firm run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared. Elnahal says he sought to learn about the world of private capital markets, with which he\u2019d had little experience. Meanwhile, he was sitting for interviews with OHSU.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lynne Swarbrick (JP Bogan) <\/p>\n

Members of the presidential search committee recall being struck by Elnahal\u2019s presence. As fear and uncertainty reigned in the hard-charging early days of the Trump administration, here was a principled and perceptive-seeming consensus builder who believed in the academic medical center mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of enthusiasm,\u201d says Lynne Swarbrick, a member of the bargaining team at a nascent AFSCME research workers union. Hayflick was on the search committee too. \u201cIt\u2019s important not to be hoodwinked by the charisma but to actually see the substance below it,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was charismatic and a person of substance.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds, \u201cHe spoke about us like he knew us.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that same morning in October, and Elnahal\u2019s tour continues on to the South Waterfront. The leader of a research pharmacy shows Elnahal around an upper-floor office that runs clinical trials for experimental medicines. \u201cWe do lots of first-in-humans,\u201d she says proudly.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s lunch time. Some descend to eat, but first Elnahal must step away for a quick phone call: It concerns ongoing negotiations with an insurer that OHSU claims should be paying it more.<\/p>\n

It can be difficult to know how seriously to take hospitals when they plead poverty, but no one thinks the Oregon health system is thriving. OHSU reported a $133 million operating loss in its 2025 fiscal year, and projected further losses in 2026.<\/p>\n

\"\"OHSU (Brian Burk) <\/p>\n

Elnahal describes tightening up the finances as an immediate priority to secure the institution\u2019s future. He also says he is determined to avoid mass layoffs. And that OHSU must remain a \u201cbackstop\u201d as other local health systems cut unprofitable service lines. \u201cWe don\u2019t have that luxury here,\u201d he told faculty at a meeting last week, evoking a higher mission.<\/p>\n

Elnahal prays when he can; he says his Muslim faith serves to buttress his integrity and values. He also espouses earth-bound leadership principles like diligence, jointness and transparency. <\/p>\n

Some are probing for gaps between talk and action. In that meeting last week, faculty grilled Elnahal with questions about an abrupt recent decision by the dean of the OHSU School of Medicine. Dr. Nathan Selden, a neurosurgeon appointed by Jacobs to the job in 2024, had just removed a widely respected primary care champion from her position as department chair.<\/p>\n

Elnahal, legs crossed in his yellow seat facing the faculty group, praised the outgoing department chair and pledged his support for family medicine, while fumbling out a neutral take on the demotion itself. (\u201cUltimately, that decision was made and I was informed.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Then there are the unions. Elnahal says a mission-driven institution like OHSU must pay a \u201cliving wage.\u201d He also notes that OHSU wages are generally competitive. Still, stark pay disparities are bound to rankle. Elnahal\u2019s base salary is $1.75 million a year\u2014about 40 times more than one of OHSU\u2019s lowest-paid workers.<\/p>\n

\"\"OHSU employees attend public board meeting in protest. (Jake Nelson) <\/p>\n

Duncan Zevetski, president of the OHSU nurses union, was put off by a comment he said Elnahal made at a town hall about needing to recruit talent at the top of the pay scale; if Zevetski had his druthers, he\u2019d worry more about juicing pay at the bottom. \u201cI can\u2019t move patients into a bed unless the room\u2019s clean,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Elnahal has thus far averted major labor trouble. OHSU secured a contract with 700 advanced practice providers in November. AFSCME 328, the massive union of some 8,000-plus eclectic staff that as of late December threatened to strike, was in recent days voting on a tentative contract. AFSCME 328 president Jennie Olson says Elnahal seems open and sincere, and that the contract was the best her union could have gotten.<\/p>\n

Yet its passage was not assured. \u201cPlease God,\u201d Elnahal said in that faculty meeting last week\u2014a plea that the rank and file approve the deal. Results emerged the next evening: The contract had passed, with 84% of the vote.<\/p>\n

If labor costs are OHSU\u2019s primary expense, the university may face greater peril on the revenue side.<\/p>\n

Health care and research are profoundly subsidized\u2014and warped\u2014by gargantuan government programs and policies, many of which the Trump administration is looking to upend. OHSU, which gets half of its revenue from the federal government, is deeply exposed. An embattled drug discount program called 340B, for example, makes up a whopping $500 million of OHSU\u2019s $6 billion budget.<\/p>\n

Yet Elnahal says threats to the public funding model run deeper than some might realize. \u201cThis,\u201d he says, \u201cis going to be an issue that lasts far beyond the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

He makes this point having returned from his insurer call. His fork hovers over a salad as he discusses the need to engage private industry. He\u2019s thinking big, not just about sustaining OHSU as it is, but about a reality that is, in fact, far headier.<\/p>\n

Casually, unself-consciously, Elnahal throws it out there: He thinks Portland could become the \u201cSilicon Valley for health care innovation.\u201d And OHSU the mother ship.<\/p>\n

\"\"OHSU tram (JP Bogan) <\/p>\n

To some, the vision will ring almost cringingly naive. Portland is not exactly an economic dynamo these days. One close health care system observer, told of Elnahal\u2019s comment, says he finds the idea \u201claughable.\u201d Where would the money come from? Where\u2019s the infrastructure? Why wouldn\u2019t someone go to, say, tax-low Houston, already a health care innovation hub?<\/p>\n

Pressed further, Elnahal insists that many of the necessary conditions are already here: In OHSU and a cluster of other universities, he sees the parallels with the North Carolina research triangle. In Intel, he sees the firepower of private industry. Yes, there are \u201cheadwinds\u201d\u2014Portland is not on the map for investors\u2014but these are \u201caddressable.\u201d He thinks wheels can be greased considerably with better outreach and targeted policy incentives. He adds: \u201cWe\u2019d want to get the unions behind us. We\u2019d want to get community and civic organizations behind us. I think there\u2019s a case to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you remain dismissive, the founding Oregon Health Authority director says you\u2019re being too cynical. \u201cWhat is really compelling about Dr. Elnahal,\u201d Dr. Bruce Goldberg says, \u201cis he\u2019s willing to come and put that audacious vision out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goldberg adds, \u201cIt\u2019s up to the rest of us to, hopefully, help that succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Dr. Brian Druker in his lab, courtesy of OHSU\/Michael McDermott <\/p>\n

Count Druker in, too. When he stepped down a little over a year ago, he had lost faith in OHSU, he acknowledges. Times have changed. He likes that Elnahal thinks big and makes people feel heard. \u201cDespite his age, he has an incredible level of confidence,\u201d Druker says. \u201cThe confidence isn\u2019t \u2018I\u2019m the smartest guy in the room.\u2019 It\u2019s the confidence of, \u2018I\u2019m here to listen, I\u2019m here to learn. And I\u2019m here to help you get more work done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet it\u2019s hard to ignore a CV full of two-to-three-year job stints. Elnahal previously knew little of Oregon, and for all his ubiquity in recent months, he\u2019s often commuted back to D.C. on weekends to visit Kamel and their young kids. In December, the family moved to Portland, and Kamel says she\u2019s trying to get her mom and friends to move here too.<\/p>\n

Elnahal says longevity questions are fair. \u201cThe intention I have is pretty simple,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is the last time we\u2019re moving until my kids are graduated from high school. My marriage depends on that.\u201d He laughs. \u201cFeel free to print that.\u201d (Kamel says her husband is being a bit overdramatic.)<\/p>\n

Arriving at the Knight Cancer Institute auditorium, Elnahal delivers some opening remarks for an event with the Mexican consulate, watches for a bit, and ducks out early. Outside the theater, he adjusts his insulin pump\u2014he has type 1 diabetes\u2014and sets off toward the Aerial Tram, which he rides up to his next engagement, soaring above an autumn Portland below.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tim Goldfarb (Andrew Schwartz) <\/p>\n

Goldfarb, preparing to step down as interim OHSU Health CEO, says he\u2019ll hear people comment on Elnahal\u2019s youth, wondering what he could really know. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll say, \u2018This organization as you see it today was built by people his age.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

OHSU got into a cycle of hiring older executives. But, recalling the period when the institution transformed from backwater to research hub, Goldfarb thinks of his own youth and that of longtime president Peter Kohler.<\/p>\n

Elnahal, Goldfarb says, is a throwback to successful university leaders past: a young outsider, \u201csomebody who doesn\u2019t know what they can\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"OHSU (JP Bogan) <\/p>\n

The sun is getting lower, and its rays catch Elnahal striding now into the main hospital building. He wears a purple bracelet fashioned by his daughter. (\u201cIf the boys give me something, I\u2019ll wear it.\u201d) Some leaders show him around Mission Control, a long room lined with dozens of large screens tracking the movement of patients around OHSU and hospitals across the state.<\/p>\n

Onward to the dispatch room, where two women wear headsets and sit before array monitors. It\u2019s quiet now, but sometimes the dispatchers see very disturbing scenes on these screens\u2014think emergency workers coding a child. On another monitor, dogs saunter and lie at rest. \u201cThe dogs,\u201d Elnahal says, \u201ctell me about the dogs.\u201d The dispatcher says the external video feed is a source of peace amid the darkness. \u201cI glance over at the puppies,\u201d she says, \u201cand everything is right in the world again.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are more people to meet. Here in the doorway is a manager that cares for families after their loved one has perished. And there is this evening\u2019s administrator on duty, the hospital field commander overseeing the boots on the ground.<\/p>\n

Elnahal smiles, says he\u2019s worked that job himself. \u201cMay you have a restful evening,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Kane Kim\u2019s name. WW regrets the error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here is Dr. Shereef Elnahal, slipping disposable blue booties over his shoes to enter a suburban laboratory. There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-425006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}