Ann Barnes

Dr. Ann Barnes is President and CEO of Episcopal Health Foundation. She joined EHF in October of 2022. Throughout her career, Ann has led innovative care solutions that go beyond the doctor’s office to tackle social, economic, and environmental drivers of health.

Most recently, Ann served as Senior Vice President and Chief Health Officer at Harris Health, the largest safety-net health system in Greater Houston. Ann was responsible for developing the system’s health equity strategy and also led the system’s efforts to improve population health, prevent disease, and address chronic conditions by integrating community resources that impact underlying, non-medical conditions like food security, safe places to exercise, poverty, and more.

Prior to Harris Health, she was Chief Medical Officer at Legacy Community Health, a large federally qualified health center system in Houston that serves more than 170,000 patients. Ann oversaw all clinic services and was instrumental in introducing the Health Leads model for patient health that focused on non-medical drivers of health.

She also served as the principal investigator for a National Institute of Health project that established a first-of-its-kind registry to understand factors that lead to successful weight loss maintenance in African Americans.

Ann is a proud native of Houston’s Fifth Ward and came back to work with Houston’s at-risk communities after graduating from Yale University and Harvard Medical School. She’s a board-certified internist who completed her residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and also earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of Texas School of Public Health.