Staff
John D. Golenski, Ed.D.
CEO, My Dutch Uncle, Inc.; President, Health Priorities Group
Dr. John Golenski has had a distinguished career in clinical services, healthcare ethics, and health policy, and has served as an executive for several major nonprofits. Early in his career he was executive director of the Shanti Project (1978–79), and chaplain and director of psychological services for the PICU at Children's Hospital, Oakland (1980–85). In 1982, he founded PediatriCare, one of the first pediatric home care hospices in the United States. From 1969 until 1992, he was a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and was ordained as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1980 while in the Jesuit Order. More recently he was received as an Episcopal priest and has served as adjunct clergy at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco.
Dr. Golenski founded the Health Priorities Group in 1986. As president of that interdisciplinary group, he has advised community hospitals, university medical centers, hospital systems, armed services hospitals, medical groups, health plans and insurers, employer groups, large employers, every level of the U.S. government, and foreign insurers and governments in the areas of healthcare delivery and health policy. He designed and facilitated Oregon's Medicaid Prioritization Project (the "Oregon Plan") in 1989, facilitated the Governors' Blue Ribbon Panel on Cost Containment for Hawaii in 1992, and has provided consultation to state healthcare reform projects in California, Arizona, Florida, New York, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Utah. He has also worked with private insurers and government health programs in Italy, France, Belgium, Sweden, Russia, and Albania, both directly through USAID and the World Bank. From 2004 to 2009 he was executive director of the George Mark Children's House, the first residential pediatric end-of-life facility in the United States.