Dr. Rishi Manchanda

Dr. Rishi Manchanda is CEO of HealthBegins, a mission-driven consulting and training firm that provides healthcare and community partners across the country with tools to improve care and the upstream social factors that make people sick in the first place. As a physician, author and healthcare leader, Dr.Manchanda has spent his career focused on developing and implementing bold strategies to improve health for sick patients and marginalized communities.  As a champion of health equity approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped launch the Community-Based Workforce Alliance, which has brought over a dozen national organizations together to describe the pivotal role of promotoras de salud and other
community-based health workers in contact tracing and broader response efforts. VYC is a member of that Alliance. Dr. Manchanda previously served as the first director of social medicine for a network of community health centers in south central Los Angeles, as the lead primary care physician for homeless Veterans at the Greater Los Angeles VA, and as chief medical officer for a large self-insured employer with a large rural immigrant workforce in California’s Central Valley. His 2013 TEDBook, The Upstream Doctors, has becomerecommended reading in medical schools and universities across the world. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. He continues to learn from and admire promotoras de salud and other community experts who work everyday to promote Hacia una vida digna y sana.