Rebuilding the Foundation: Recommendations for Revitalizing Primary Care
February 19, 2026
An increasingly broad array of stakeholders agree that primary care is in crisis, at great detriment to individual and population health and to the cost-effectiveness of health care. Less clear are the highest priority steps that should be taken to address the crisis, so that high quality primary care built on a foundation of longitudinal, trusting clinician-patient-family relationships will be readily available to all. Delineating those high priority steps was the focus of the Revitalizing Primary Care Summit (Rev PC), convened by the UC Davis School of Medicine in October 2024.
Sponsored by the California Health Care Foundation, this webinar covered the seven major recommendations from Rev PC. A diverse panel of experts discussed how they’re working to improve primary care in the sectors (e.g., state agencies, payers, health plans) they represent. Topics include the Office of Health Care Affordability's new primary care spending targets, how to raise the primary care spend while placing curbs on overall cost growth, and achieving an adequate primary care workforce.
Speaker Biographies
Palav Babaria, M.D., was appointed Chief Quality and Medical Officer and Deputy Director of Quality and Population Health Management at the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) in March 2021. In that capacity, she and her team are responsible for ensuring the quality, health equity, population health outcomes, and value-based payment approaches for the 14 million Californians currently served in its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal.
Prior to joining DHCS, Babaria served as Chief Administrative Officer for Ambulatory Services at the Alameda Health System (AHS), where she was responsible for all outpatient clinical operations, quality of care, and strategy for primary care, specialty care, dental services, and integrated and specialty behavioral health, as well as executive sponsor for value-based programs including the Medi-Cal 1115 Waiver. Previously, she was the Medical Director of K6 Adult Medicine Clinic. Babaria also has over a decade of global health experience. Her work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Academic Medicine, Social Science and Medicine, L.A. Times, and New York Times. She received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, as well as her M.D. and master’s degree in health science from Yale University. She completed her residency training in internal medicine and global health fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.
Margareta Brandt, M.P.H., is the Assistant Deputy Director for Health System Performance at the Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) at the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI). She oversees the development and implementation of OHCA’s efforts to promote a value-based health care system by measuring quality, equity, adoption of alternative payment models, investment in primary care and behavioral health, and workforce stability alongside implementing spending growth targets to improve health care affordability. Brandt leads the Office’s development of a primary care spending definition and statewide primary care investment benchmark to build and sustain primary care infrastructure and capacity and promote improved outcomes for primary care.
Brandt was previously the Quality Improvement Manager for Covered California, where she led engagement with health plans to improve health care quality and implement delivery system and payment reforms. Before joining Covered California, she worked at a nonprofit coalition of public and private health care providers and community organizations, where she facilitated a collaborative quality improvement initiative for 12 community clinics. Brandt has a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.
Alice Hm Chen, M.D., M.P.H., is the Executive Vice President and Chief Health Officer for Centene Corporation, the largest Medicaid and Marketplace managed care organization in the country. Chen is responsible for Centene’s strategies, policies, and programs in support of improving population health for Centene’s members. A primary care internist by training, her career has focused on improving access, quality, and equity of care for under-resourced communities.
Prior to joining Centene, Chen was Chief Medical Officer at Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace, where she was responsible for health care strategy focused on quality, equity, and delivery system transformation. She previously served as Deputy Secretary for Policy and Planning and Chief of Clinical Affairs for the California Health and Human Services Agency, where she led signature health policy initiatives including the development of the Office of Health Care Affordability and played a leadership role in the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chen was also a Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where she served as its Chief Integration Officer, Founding Director of the eConsult program, and Medical Director of its primary care internal medicine clinic.
Carlina Hansen, M.H.A., is a Senior Program Officer for the California Health Care Foundation’s Improving Access team, which works to improve access to coverage and care for Californians with low incomes. Before joining the team at CHCF, Hansen worked at the Women’s Community Clinic in San Francisco, where she served as the Executive Director for 17 years. Before her work at the clinic, she was a Senior Program Coordinator at the Tides Center, a fiscal sponsor and nonprofit incubator. Hansen serves on the boards of the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Organization.
Hansen is a graduate of the Women’s Policy Institute of the Women’s Foundation of California and of the Clinic Leadership Institute. She holds a master of science degree in health care administration from the University of California, San Francisco, where she now serves on the faculty.
Anthony Jerant, M.D., joined the UC Davis Department of Family and Community Medicine in 1998 and was appointed Chair in January 2018. He strives to embody the servant leadership philosophy, maintaining a primary focus on cultivating the growth and well-being of the people in the Department and the patients and communities it serves. Before becoming Chair, he was the Department’s Vice Chair for Research. Jerant’s research has a strong focus on studying how different aspects of healthcare delivery, including home telecare and computer technology-enhanced office visits, are associated with patient and provider experiences and care outcomes. He has developed and studied patient-facing individualized (personally tailored) interventions to enhance clinician-patient interactions and increase patient activation in care. Additional studies examined how various features of primary care practices are associated with health outcomes, including mortality. Other influential studies concerned the associations of medical school admissions approaches with physician workforce diversity and primary care specialty choice.
Richard Kravitz, M.D., M.S.P.H., is Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine at UC Davis and was co-chair of the 2024 UC Davis Revitalizing Primary Care Summit. As a primary care physician and researcher, Kravitz has spent his career deeply involved in studying the disruption of the primary care system and proposing strategies for needed reform. Examples of his research include the causes and consequences of physician behavior; improving care for mental health conditions in primary care settings; and identifying the relationship between patient mix, utilization of health care services, physician specialty, and the system of care. His research has also examined patients’ expectations for care, how physicians respond to patients’ requests for services, and how direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs influences physician decision-making in depression. Other leadership positions that Kravitz has held include serving as a commissioner to the National Commission on Payment Reform (2013) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of General Internal Medicine (2009-2017).
Raymond Tsai, M.D., M.S., is a family medicine physician serving as Vice President of Advanced Primary Care for Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH), a nonprofit coalition of about 40 private employers and public entities nationally that collectively spend $350 billion annually purchasing health care services for more than 21 million Americans and their families. He is currently working with PBGH to help employer and purchaser members identify high quality advanced primary care that meets purchaser standards, as well as enabling easy contracting of identified clinical partners of assured quality.
Before joining PBGH, Tsai helped establish an advanced primary care clinic for a private employer and saw them effect their advanced primary care model in improving health outcomes, patient experience, provider experience, health equity, and health care spend for agriculture workers in California’s Central Valley.