Devika Bhushan, MD, is a pediatrician, public health leader, and writer on a mission to drive health innovation, equity and resilience.

Previously, as California’s Acting Surgeon General and the office’s inaugural Chief Health Officer, Dr. Bhushan was a key public health spokesperson, advisor to the California Governor, and led policy and practice innovation at a statewide level.

Dr. Bhushan’s policy, research, and clinical expertise spans trauma-informed systems, stress and resilience, mental health, and gender and health equity. Her work has been featured in The Lancet, Pediatrics, National Public Radio (NPR), The Los Angeles Times, and Healthy Children. She has served on Stanford’s faculty and trained at Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Bhushan serves as a senior advisor to entities that aim to advance health, innovation, and equity, including the Weitzman Institute, focused on primary care innovation, GreyMatter, a venture capital fund dedicated to mental health innovation, and Health Management Associates, focused on health policy and strategy.

Dr. Bhushan is committed to destigmatizing living with serious mental illness and to promoting healing; to this end, she has shared her own journey with bipolar disorder publicly. In 2023, she launched a vibrant community to advance well-being through a monthly newsletter and YouTube channel.

Having spent her early years between the Philippines, India, and the US, Dr. Bhushan is an immigrant and a first-generation American. She lives in San Francisco with her long-time partner and their son.