Dr. Kierstin Cates Kennedy is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the chief medical officer for UAB Medicine. A 1,207-bed quaternary hospital and academic health science center, UAB Hospital is the eighth largest hospital in the US and serves as the only American College of Surgeons verified Level I Trauma Center in the state of Alabama.

Dr. Kennedy graduated from the UAB Heersink School of Medicine in 2007 and completed her combined internal medicine-pediatrics residency at UAB Hospital. She completed the Executive Master of Science in Health Administration program at UAB in 2011 and went on to complete a fellowship in quality improvement via the VA Quality Scholars Fellowship in Birmingham, Alabama. She has held numerous leadership roles in quality and operations, including medical director for the UAB Compliant Documentation Management Program, director of quality for hospital medicine, and chief of hospital medicine, with achievements in process redesign that have yielded sustained improvement in both quality and efficiency in care delivery. In 2014, Dr. Kennedy created the UAB Procedure Service, which has celebrated nearly a decade of decreased time-to-procedure by more than 50 percent, a 93 percent procedure success rate, and less than 0.2 percent complication rate. She also went on to create the UAB Comprehensive Vascular Access Team (CVAT), a multidisciplinary consult team designed to reduce delays in obtaining vascular access ranging from peripheral IVs to central venous catheters.

Dr. Kennedy is a member of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) Board of Directors and serves as both course director and as a faculty member for the SHM Leadership Academy. She is also on the faculty of the SHM/Society of General Internal Medicine Academic Hospitalist Academy, an annual four-day meeting aimed at developing early academic hospitalists’ career skills. She speaks nationally on leadership topics such as conflict resolution for leaders, emotional intelligence, building high-performing teams, and leveraging positive psychology to drive quality improvement. She also teaches physicians and students across the US how to safely perform ultrasound-guided bedside procedures. She is a past winner of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Dean’s Excellence Award for Service, the UAB Alumni Society Distinguished Alumni Award, the Association of Chiefs and Leaders in General Internal Medicine Unified Leadership Training in Diversity Award, and the national Paul Batalden Award from the VA Quality Scholars Program. She holds the designation of Fellow with the American College of Physicians and Senior Fellow with the SHM.