Steven Stites

In August 2024, Chancellor Douglas A. Girod named Dr. Steven Stites executive vice chancellor for the University of Kansas Medical Center and chief health sciences officer for all five campuses of the University of Kansas. As part of the One KU initiative launched in August 2024, these roles were designed to help unify the health sciences and foster greater development of education and research across all locations of the University of Kansas. In this role, Dr. Stites reports to Chancellor Girod.   

Importantly, Dr. Stites retained his role as executive vice president and chief medical officer of The University of Kansas Health System, a position he has held since 2017, reporting to Chief Executive Officer Bob Page and Tammy Peterman, president of the Kansas City Division. In combining these different roles, Dr. Stites works to strategically align the health system and the university, especially as it applies to research and education, and to coordinate campus planning and the growth of clinical and academic medicine.   

Prior to his current roles, Dr. Stites served as senior vice president of clinical affairs from 2014 to 2017 in the health system, vice chancellor of clinical affairs for the medical center and senior associate dean for clinical affairs for KU School of Medicine from 2012 to 2024, and as interim executive vice chancellor of the medical center and dean of KU School of Medicine from 2011 to 2012. From 2011 to 2016, Dr. Stites helped lead the university team and was pivotal in clinical integration negotiations, in which the practice plans joined The University of Kansas Hospital to create The University of Kansas Health System. He also has served as chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and as a residency program director.

Dr. Stites earned his medical degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and completed his residency and chief residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester. He subsequently completed a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at  KU Medical Center. He joined the faculty in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in 1993, specializing in the care of adults with cystic fibrosis.