Sarah DeSilvey, DNP, FNP

Sarah C. DeSilvey, DNP, FNP balances practice as a rural family nurse practitioner with advocacy for addressing the social determinants of health in clinical and community practice. In her practice she provides full spectrum primary care with an area of focus on adolescent mental health and trauma. She is faculty in pediatrics at the UVM Larner College of Medicine. In addition to clinical practice, she is a terminologist focusing on developing the terminology to capture the process of caring for patients’ social needs. Over the last decade she has collaborated with diverse colleagues on medical and social care integration and interoperability projects. Her work has now evolved into Gravity Project – a national consensus initiative to develop the data and data standards to address social needs. She serves as the Terminology Director helping to weave the practice of social care, community-based approaches, and the literature of social risk into health care terminology. In line with her focus on social care terminology, she was Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra’s 2023 selection for the US Health Information Technical Advisory Committee (HITAC) and is the incoming co-chair of HITAC, and the ongoing co-chair of the Interoperability Standards Workgroup. In the spring of 2023, she also assumed co-leadership of the CMS Addressing Social Needs eCQM through Yale Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation (CORE).