Transformation of Systems, Ourselves and Society

Benjamin E. Kligler, MD, MPH was appointed on May 24, 2020 as the Executive Director of the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA), Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation. As Executive Director, Dr. Kligler oversees the work of VHA’s Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation (OPCC&CT) in advancing the Whole Health mod el throughout the VA system, shifting the agency’s position as a health care system traditionally focused on the treatment of injury and disease to a modern system that also empowers Veterans to discover what matters most. VA’s Whole Health system goes further, both treating and equipping Veterans with Whole Health Clinical Care and well - being programs that support Veterans to take charge of their health and live life to the fullest. Dr. Kligler is a board - certified family physician who has been working as a clinician, educator, researcher and administrative leader in the field of complementary and integrative medicine for the past 25 years. In May 2016 he was named National Director of the Integrative Health Coordinating Center (IHCC) in the OPCC&CT. Dr. Kligler also served as Director of Education and Research for OPCC&CT. He is a Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai School of Medicine and was Vice Chair and Research Director of the Mount Sinai Beth Israel Department of Integrative Medicine. Dr. Kligler was the founding medical director of the Continuum Center for Health and Healing, a large integrative medicine practice which opened in May 2000. In addition, Dr. Kligler also held the position of Director of the Beth Israel Fellows hip Program in Integrative Medicine, which accepted its first fellows for training in 2002, and still teaches in the Beth Israel Residency Program in Urban Family Practice. He is also a core faculty member of the Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare at Duke University.