valiant healthcare
Our Team.
The Board of Valiant Healthcare are healthcare leaders passionate about patient care access and affordability. Our goal is to create the highest quality, most affordable care possible for the patients who need us most.
Timothy A. Peterson, MD, MBA, FACEP
Chair
Dr. Peterson is an Emergency Medicine physician in active practice. He has led health insurers and medical groups as Chief Medical Officer and served as the Chief Executive for the largest Accountable Care Organization in Michigan.
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Dr. Peterson’s academic interests include healthcare access, affordability, quality at the population and individual patient levels and healthcare payment policy.
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He received his BA in Microbiology with a minor in Management and Organizational Behavior from Miami University in Ohio and his MD from the University of Cincinnati. He completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at the University of Michigan. Afterward he received a MBA from the University of Michigan as well.
John Burkhardt, MD, PhD
Vice Chair
Dr. Burkhardt is an Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine and Learning Health Sciences. In addition to Dr. Burkhardt’s clinical work in Emergency Medicine, he has earned both a Master’s and Ph.D. in Higher Education in order to expand his quantitative and policy analytic skills to address large scale professional education issues. His research focuses on critically reevaluating medical education policy to increase fairness, equity, and ultimately address health care disparities. This interest is grounded in a commitment to bring better alignment across key components of medical education so that, as a profession, we can more fully meet societal needs and the needs of our patients. His scholarship has included areas such as recruitment, admissions, selection of residents, curriculum, and assessment. He has chosen these areas due to a belief that there is a current mismatch between our stated goals of inclusion in the profession and our preparation of physicians to meet looming needs in areas of specialization (especially primary care and emergency care), the documented needs of traditionally underserved medical populations, and the way we select, recruit, and train medical students and residents. To address these issues in a novel manner, he also has expanded his research to include examining the effect of educational diversity on health care delivery in order to reconceptualize medical education as an underutilized lever in healthcare disparities amelioration.
Mercy Hanson, MD, MS
Treasurer
Dr. Hanson is a family physician, Assistant Professor and Service Chief in the University of Michigan Department of Family Medicine. As a family physician, she sees patients at Chelsea Health Center.
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Dr. Hanson's current research interests include trends in healthcare leadership and workforce sustainability particularly pertaining to primary care. She hopes to gain a better understanding of what determinants guide leaders to their positions.
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Dr. Hanson currently serves as a representative on the Association of Medical Colleges Organization of Resident Representatives. Dr. Hanson was selected into the Medical Education Scholars Program which provides an opportunity for faculty to apply principles of medical education in depth. She was also selected into the Healthcare Administration Scholar Program, that serves to teach trainees the tools needed to become successful leaders in healthcare. She has several on-going projects related to leadership in academic medicine and has published and spoken nationally on her experiences in medical training.
Leigh Sanderson, RN, MSN
Secretary
Leigh Sanderson MSN, RN, CEN is a Registered Nurse in the University of Michigan Emergency Department. She is the overnight Lead Charge Nurse in the 108-bed Level-1 Trauma and Comprehensive Stroke Center.
Leigh excels as the Charge Nurse where she also trains and mentors nurses new to the role. She functions as a nurse leader in the Emergency Critical Care Center and triage areas and has also served on committees in the Emergency Department aimed at optimizing nursing workload and improving patient throughput. Leigh is also a DAISY Award Honoree recognizing her excellence in nursing care.
She received her BA in Sport Management and Communications from the University of Michigan and her ASN from the State College of Florida. Recently, she received a MSN in Clinical Leadership from the University of Arizona.
