CHIBE Remembers Former Board Member Paul Mango
The Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) is saddened to recognize the passing of former external advisory board member Paul Mango, MBA, on January 16, 2025. He was 65 years old.
“Paul Mango was a friend to CHIBE and did a lot to help us get started back in 2009,” CHIBE Director Dr. Kevin Volpp said. “From his role overseeing the health care group at McKinsey, he had a bird’s eye view of the challenges in health care and realized that research on how to improve health and health behavior using behavioral economics could be impactful. He supported involvement in our team in some experiments with McKinsey clients, and as an advisory board member for 9 years he helped us think about how to design research that was actionable and relevant.
Paul showed up at every meeting; he was somebody who not only honored his commitments but embraced them. I am personally grateful to him for his many efforts to connect us with others both during his time on our Board and in the following years. He was an amazing connector and sought to bring us together with others who he thought we could learn from or vice versa. His career was dedicated to unflagging efforts to improve health and health care for all Americans. He was somebody we felt fortunate to get to know and whose efforts to push us to advance the frontiers of what was possible working together will be missed.”
In October of 2024 with support from 4 health systems, Mango created (as founding CEO) Longitude Health with a mission of “identifying, developing, and scaling solutions to enhance core operational functions and transform health system performance” to build solutions for the good of all health systems and their patients.
He had also joined the transition team for Trump’s second presidency in October, according to STAT.
In addition to serving on CHIBE’s board from 2009-2018, Mango was also Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company for two decades, where he was McKinsey’s U.S. Health Care Practice Leader and Global Health Care Practice Leader.
He then ran unsuccessfully for Pennsylvanian governor in 2018.
Starting in 2018, he served as Chief Principal Deputy Administrator and Chief of Staff for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
From 2019-2021, Mango was the Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Trump’s administration. He served as Secretary Azar’s formal liaison to Operation Warp Speed “where he was involved in nearly all strategic, operational, and financial aspects of the program, and facilitated its day-to-day activities among the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, and the White House.”
In 2022, he published the book “Warp Speed: Inside the Operation that Beat COVID, the Critics, and the Odds,” described as the “inside story of how America’s unique public-private partnership brought multiple safe and effective COVID vaccines to market faster and in larger quantities than in any other time in history.”
Mango received his bachelor’s in engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
“He contributed a great deal to improving health and health outcomes and had much left to contribute. He will be sorely missed,” Dr. Volpp said.