Devika Bhushan, MD

Devika Bhushan, MD, is a pediatrician and public health leader on a mission to drive health innovation, resilience and equity. Her expertise spans trauma-informed systems, stress and resilience, mental health, and gender and health equity. Her work has been featured in The Lancet, Pediatrics, JAMA, Slate, NPR, NBC and The Los Angeles Times.

Dr. Bhushan serves as chief medical officer at Daybreak Health, which brings free, personalized mental health support directly to youth in schools; as an adjunct faculty member at Stanford University; and as a senior strategic advisor to entities that aim to advance health, innovation and equity — ranging from nonprofits to a venture capital firm. She also serves on the national Board of Directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the California Partners Project, co-founded by California’s First Partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, to focus on gender equity and child wellbeing.

As California’s acting surgeon general (2022) and its inaugural chief health officer (2019-2022), Dr. Bhushan was a key public health spokesperson and advisor to the California governor. In these roles, she led policy and practice innovation at a statewide level by co-leading the launch and implementation of the ACEs Aware initiative, focused on healing from childhood trauma.

Dr. Bhushan is also an award-winning mental health spokesperson, known for publicly sharing her own journey with bipolar disorder while serving as California’s acting surgeon general, to destigmatize mental illness and spread hope.

Dr. Bhushan trained at Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins University. She is a parent, an immigrant and a first-generation Indian American.