Dr. Kaitlan Baston is the Interim Chief Executive Officer and President of University Hospital.

Before joining University Hospital, Dr. Baston served as the New Jersey Commissioner of Health, where she worked to protect and promote the health and well-being of New Jersey residents and oversee the state’s healthcare system. Dr. Baston’s work has focused on decreasing health disparities, improving maternal child health outcomes, and enhancing integrated care for behavioral health and substance use disorders.

Prior to her tenure as Commissioner, Dr. Baston served as the Division Head of Addiction Medicine and Center Head of the Center for Healing at Cooper University Health Care. Dr. Baston founded the Center for Healing, which provides integrated pain, addiction, and behavioral health care and undergraduate and graduate medical education in addiction medicine and research. Dr. Baston was the PI for over $10 million in federal and state grants, and she was also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.

She began her career as a full-spectrum family physician focused on underserved populations. Before arriving in New Jersey, her work ranged from public health projects in Rwanda to public maternity and trauma hospitals in the Dominican Republic. She also provided full spectrum family planning services and worked at a bilingual community health center in Seattle, Washington.

Dr. Baston is dual boarded in Family Medicine and Addiction Medicine, obtained a master’s degree in Neuroscience from Kings College, London, and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA.