Bio: Reza Jarral, MBBS, BSc (Hons), MTF, DFSRH, MRCS (ENT), FRCGP, FRNZCGP, FFMLM, FBCS, is a 2025–26 New Zealand Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. He is a primary care physician, the Chief Medical Officer of CareHQ, a DICE Fellow at the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Stanford Center for Digital Health. He was the inaugural clinical director for health equity at ProCare, New Zealand's largest primary health organization, where he supported $1.4 billion in community care services for over 850,000 people from 2022 to 2025. He completed his medical, business, and healthcare management training at Imperial College London and holds a master's degree in technological futures. Jarral is passionate about bridging gaps in care and enhancing access for underserved groups. He continues to practice as a front-line doctor and volunteers as a telemedicine physician for The Addis Clinic, a global nonprofit on a mission to bring lifesaving health care to underserved communities in East Africa. His commitment to leveraging technology for positive human impact has earned recognition from the Rockefeller Foundation, Imperial College London, and the Edmund Hillary Fellowship.
Placement: Stanford University
Mentors: Brian Anderson, Chief Executive Officer, Coalition for Health AI (CHAI); Nirav Shah, M.D., Senior Scholar, Clinical Excellence Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine; C. Jason Wang
Project: Modernizing Healthcare Through Digital Innovation: Accelerating Design and Delivery with Translational Practice
Description: Healthcare systems in the United States and New Zealand face unsustainable cost growth, workforce shortages, and entrenched inequities, with non-communicable diseases driving nearly 90 percent of mortality in both countries. Jarral's project examines how digital, AI-enabled, and value-based care models can improve patient outcomes while lowering per capita costs. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines literature review, site visits, applied case studies, and design thinking, the research moves across four translational stages: (1) designing high-potential digital health applications, (2) implementing them through payer and provider partnerships, (3) evaluating their clinical and economic impact, and (4) accelerating adoption through policy. Outputs include a five-part publication series on diagnostic care models developed with the Stanford CERC DICE program, a Food as Medicine natural study in the Bronx, a Learning Health Networks initiative, and placements with the Coalition for Health AI and Peterson Health Technology Institute.