Prior to joining the Foundation in April 2001, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey served in a variety of roles at the University of Pennsylvania. She was director of the Institute on Aging, University of Pennsylvania; chief of the division of geriatric medicine; Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems; and associate chief of staff for geriatrics and extended care for the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center. She also served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as deputy administrator of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now known as the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality). Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey was a member of the White House Task Force on Health Care Reform and served as a consultant to the White House on issues of health policy.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey has served on several federal advisory committees, including the Task Force on Aging Research, the Office of Technology Assessment Panel on Preventive Services for Medicare Beneficiaries, the Institute of Medicine's Panel on Disease and Disability Prevention Among Older Adults, and the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics (where she chaired the Subcommittee on Minority Populations). She also served on the President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry. She recently completed service as co-vice chair of a congressionally requested IOM study on racial disparities in health care.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey is a member of the IOM of the National Academy of Sciences and a master of the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine. She earned an M.D. degree at Harvard Medical School, followed by an MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. After completing a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her geriatrics training.