Vanila Singh
Vanila M. Singh is an American physician and professor with involvement in United States health policy. Singh was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in 2014. Early in her career she taught at UCLA Medical Center, and she is currently an associate professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. On June 12, 2017, she was appointed the chief medical officer to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a presidential appointment at the Senior Executive Service level. She served as Chair of the Inter-Agency Pain Management Task Force established by the CARA Act of 2016, which released its final report on acute and chronic pain management best practices on May 30, 2019. Dr. Singh was also appointed as the Acting Regional Health Administrator in Region 9 (California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and six Pacific Islands) in August 2018. With various Republican Party endorsements, in early 2014 Singh announced a campaign against incumbent Mike Honda to represent California's 17th congressional district (Silicon Valley) in the US House of Representatives. In the primaries Singh came in third In August 2014, Neel Kashkari named Singh the chairperson of the Indo American Coalition during his campaign for the governorship of California. In 2016, she was a California delegate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Singh is vice chairman of the National Physicians Council on Health Policy. In 2016 she was named to the editorial board of Interventional Pain Letters. For 2016 and 2017, she was named chair of the professional standards/conduct committee of the Santa Clara County Medical Association. Early life and education Vanila M. Singh was born in Bikaner, India. At age one her parents Lalit and Leela Mathur immigrated to the United States. The family moved to California when she was four years old, and she spent her youth in Fremont, California, attending Niles Elementary School, Centerville Junior High School, and Washington High School. During her childhood her parents helped establish the Hindu Temple in Fremont, also founding the Rajasthani Association of North America. Singh was accepted to the University of California, Berkeley where she double-majored in economics and molecular and cell biology. Graduating with a B.S., she then moved to Washington, D.C. to become a medical student at the George Washington University Medical Center, where she received her M.D. Career Medical roles Singh completed her initial medical internship at Yale University Medical Center in 1997 and 1998. An anesthesia resident at Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan from 1998 until 2001, from 2001 until 2002 she was a pain management fellow in various locations, including Cornell University, Columbia Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She is double-certified in anesthesia and pain management from the American Board of Anesthesiology. After serving as a clinical assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, she became a clinical associate professor at Stanford University Medical School for