Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey

Dr. Tallia is Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick. (B.S. Fordham, M.D. RWJMS, M.P.H. Rutgers). He completed residency and fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. A university designated Master Educator, he has served in many university leadership roles, and is a Fellow in the Rutgers Center for Organizational Leadership.

Earlier in his career, in addition to managing a university affiliated primary care corporation, he served as vice chair and associate director of research, during which time he fostered the growth of the Family Medicine department’s research. Under his leadership as Chair, the research division, ranked #1 in cancer survivorship research, emerged as a national center applying both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to the study of health system change and innovation, particularly at the primary care practice level. He is currently co-lead of the community core of NJACTS, the Rutgers, Princeton, and NJ Institute of Technology’s Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Institutes of Health. The primary author and editor of Swanson’s Family Medicine Review, an internationally used textbook now in its 8th edition, and more than 100 published abstracts, book chapters, and scientific publications, he has been principal or co-PI of multiple broadly funded grants focused on health system quality of care, organization, and function. While developing and leading the medical school’s flagship New Brunswick based residency, recognized for providing innovative community-based training for family physicians, he won the STFM national Research Award for the landmark study (Academic Medicine1994) demonstrating family medicine residencies reduce patient care costs for the healthcare system.

Dr. Tallia has grown the Department and expanded its role in the university community with the creation divisions of community health, sports medicine, hospital medicine, and fostered the initiation of multiple clinical programs including the Rutgers Home Visit Service, the Center for Healthy Aging, and the Rutgers RWJ Hospitalist and Post-Acute services, the latter two which serve a large percent of the adult admissions to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. He also has promoted multiple ongoing collaborative programs with the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Rutgers University Behavioral Healthcare, Institute for Translational Medicine and Science, Rutgers Global Health, Rutgers Health, and many other units of the university.

In 2010, he conceptualized and developed Robert Wood Johnson Partners, LLC, the integrated delivery system of Rutgers University and the Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health System. During his time as the founding executive director, this clinically integrated system grew within two years to serve more than 35,000 Medicare and commercially insured lives in seven counties of central New Jersey, included a network of more than 200 primary care and 700 specialty care physicians, five hospitals, multiple post-acute facilities, and met quality metrics at the CMS 96th percentile and financial targets to achieve $3.6M in savings. RWJ Partners was recognized twice by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of ‘100 ACOs to Know’ out of more than 2000.  His statewide leadership in advancing the health of the public was recognized in 2017 by a joint resolution of the New Jersey Legislature, and by the Edward J. Ill Foundation for Excellence in Medicine.

In addition to his roles at Rutgers, he is Chair of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), the preeminent international non-profit organization responsible for developing competency assessments of physicians and other health professionals around the world.  He also is past chair of the Composite Committee governing the United States Medical Licensing Examination program, the common licensure assessment pathway for all foreign and domestic medical school graduates. He has served on the executive committee of the Washington based Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, the coalition of Fortune 500 payers, providers, and consumers advancing healthcare reform, and on the boards of Horizon (Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey) Health Innovations, the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and the Robert Wood Johnson Health System. He continues to serve on boards of Rutgers Health, the VNA Health Group, Parker Life, and numerous other public and private health-related organizations.