Roger Dowdy, LICSW, MHA
Chief Operating Officer, Providence’s Well Being Trust; Vice President, Mental Health Population Health Management
Roger Dowdy serves as chief operating officer for Providence’s Well Being Trust. He also serves as vice president of mental health population health management at Providence.
In these roles, he leads initiatives around behavioral health clinical improvement, measurement-based care, digital therapeutics, health care worker/caregiver mental wellness, and value-based behavioral health care. In addition, he co-chairs the system-wide, Providence Behavioral Health Leadership Council, which aligns mental health efforts by bringing together teams from the clinical services division, population health, community partnerships, government affairs, human resources, digital innovation, Mission integration, and social engagement.
Roger has more than 30 years of experience as a clinician and administrator in the health care and non-profit sector. As a licensed independent clinical social worker, he worked extensively with individuals struggling with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Early in his career he served as an emergency room psychiatric social worker at Harborview Medical Center (the only level-one trauma center in Washington state) and a designated crisis responder for King County, Washington, conducting involuntary crisis commitment evaluations.
As an administrator, Roger has led the overall coordination of large scale, clinic operations and health plan functions in multiple organizations, including the integration of behavioral health services into primary care. He previously served in leadership roles at Virginia Mason Medical Center, the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, and Neighborcare Health (a large Federally Qualified Health Center in the Puget Sound region).
Prior to joining Providence, Roger served as director of mental health and wellness at Kaiser Permanente of Washington where he had responsibility for the behavioral health care delivery system as well as overall coordination of health plan functions and behavioral health network management.
Roger holds a master’s degree in health administration from the University of Washington and a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work where he teaches graduate-level, health policy classes. He is a board member of Sound, one of the largest community mental health providers in Washington State, where he was first employed as a mental health case manager more than 30 years ago.
