This month, we are excited to congratulate Sheldon Cooper, Executive Director, on his 10-year anniversary at WPHP! His decade of leadership and behind-the-scenes work has undeniably shaped the growth and success of WPHP.

Since being appointed Executive Director by the WPHP Board of Directors in March 2015, Mr. Cooper has collaborated with Dr. Chris Bundy, Executive Medical Director, to lead efforts in advancing the health and well-being of Washington’s medical community. His thoughtfulness, innovativeness, and commitment to the WPHP mission have made a lasting impact on our organization. The WPHP team is immensely grateful for Mr. Cooper’s guidance, which has made WPHP a great place to work and a valuable resource for Washington’s health professionals.  

Upon reaching this incredible milestone, Mr. Cooper reflected on his time and accomplishments at WPHP:

One of the wonderful aspects of my work is that I co-lead the organization with Dr. Chris Bundy. This arrangement allows us to divide the work according to our strengths. Dr. Bundy leads our clinical, educational, and advocacy efforts, while I focus on administrative operations, human resources, and finances. I am tremendously proud of the strides we have made in reducing stigma and barriers to help-seeking for Washington’s health professionals, as well as the industry-leading health outcomes our participants achieve with our support. These efforts and successes rightfully take center stage. But today, I want to mention some of the less visible work and successes that happen behind the scenes that I am also very proud of. Over the past several years we have:  

• Invested in our amazing staff by maintaining competitive pay and increasing benefits, work-life balance, and work flexibility. Our staff are our greatest asset.  

• Enhanced our communications capacity to increase transparency and our ability to tell the story of so many health professionals whose lives and careers have been saved through their partnership with WPHP. We built a communications team and launched newsletters, blogs, social media accounts, and video platforms to extend the reach of our traditional in-person presentations.    

• Modernized operations by increasing system capability, efficiency, and security while containing costs. We reduced our office footprint, went paperless, and upgraded our computer systems.  

• Worked diligently to reduce the financial and time burdens for participants of our program by launching telehealth services and at-home toxicology testing while working with insurers to expand coverage. We also insulated participants from vendor fee increases and provided over $200,000 in grants to participants in need during 2024 alone. 

• With support from our partners, we passed legislation in 2024 increasing the license surcharge that underwrites 80% of our work. For most of our licensees, this fee had not been increased for a decade or more. Securing this funding will help keep WPHP on a strong financial foundation for the next decade of our work.

We have made great progress in strengthening and expanding much of the “behind-the-scenes” infrastructure that critically supports our service delivery over the past several years, and we have a long list of additional enhancements that we plan to build out in the coming years. I am honored to have been a part of these improvements during the past decade and look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together in the years to come.