Donna R. Cryer, JD is Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Liver Institute, the only patient-driven liver health nonprofit operating across the US, EU, and UK. GLI convenes the NASH, Liver Cancer and Pediatric and Rare Liver Disease Councils, as well as the Liver Action Network, collectively more than 200 organizations.
Mrs. Cryer has channeled her personal experience as a patient with inflammatory bowel disease and a 27-year liver transplant recipient into professional advocacy across a career in law, policy, consulting, public relations, clinical trial recruitment, and nonprofit management. She is the recipient of the 2021 Global Genes RARE Champions of Hope Founder’s Award and the 2021 AASLD Distinguished Advocacy Service Award.
At GLI, Mrs. Cryer has raised more than $10 million for liver health initiatives. Among her many accomplishments with GLI, she developed a program featured by the White House on Solving Organ Shortage/Transplantation. She has launched numerous other successful programs at GLI, including the Cure Campaign, Advanced Advocacy Academy (A3), Liver Matters Blog, Liver Matters Health Policy Memo, the NASH Council, the Liver Cancers Council and the Pediatric and Rare Liver Diseases Council.
She is a frequent speaker on the topic of patient-centeredness and patient engagement in healthcare transformation and created a unique model for advocacy that mobilizes patients, influences policy, and coalesces clinicians to improve patient outcomes. In May 2021, she testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, in a pivotal hearing on reforming the broken organ procurement system. Her testimony highlighted the racial disparities in organ transplantation. Thanks to consistent, fact-based advocacy from GLI, other allied groups, the media, and Congress, meaningful reforms to improve the system are finalized and forthcoming. Her advocacy for better representation of people of color in the organ procurement system includes urging the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to implement three concrete steps she identified to facilitate more transplants for people of color and an elevated performance for the entire system, benefiting all patients.
For almost a decade, Mrs. Cryer founded and led CryerHealth, a healthcare consulting firm providing strategic counsel to top biopharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy organizations and emerging technology firms on patient engagement in health information technology, drug discovery and clinical decision making.
Earlier in her career, Mrs. Cryer worked at the United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond, Va., where she negotiated organ allocation regulations with the Department of Health and Human Services as part of the special executive staff/board member team. She also organized an immunosuppressive coalition of pharmaceutical companies, transplantation groups and key congressional offices, resulting in increased coverage of immunosuppressive medications under Medicare.
Mrs. Cryer serves on the Boards of Directors for the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, Sibley Memorial Hospital/Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI), and the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative. She was the first patient to serve on the ABIM Gastroenterology Specialty Board, was one of the founding members of the AASLD Patient Advisory Committee and is the Community Representative on the AASLD NASH Task Force. Previously, Mrs. Cryer served on the Executive Committee of the People-Centered Research Foundation. She was appointed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office to serve as the patient and consumer representative on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, the federal advisory body to the National Coordinator for HIT. In addition, she served as a patient representative to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Group to the NIH Learning Health System Research Collaboratory, as well as on the ABIM Gastroenterology Specialty Board and on an American Society of Clinical Oncology Guidelines Committee.
Mrs. Cryer was proud to serve as a member of the White House Task Force on e-health Equity in 2013. As part of the task force, she worked with a summit of experts on health disparities and health information technology to establish a framework to ensure that underserved populations benefit from advances in health technologies.
She has been named one of the Top Blacks in Healthcare by the Milken Institute at GW School of Public Health and BlackDoctors.org, one of the Top 10 Patients Who Make An Impact by Health 2.0 and one of PharmaVoice’s 100 Most Inspiring People. She is a frequent speaker on patient centricity in research and healthcare delivery at meetings of Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), National Quality Forum (NQF), American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).
Mrs. Cryer received an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown University Law Center.