A health policy expert and top-rated editor and journalist, Dentzer served as editor-in-chief of the policy journal Health Affairs from 2008 to 2013, and was an award-winning on-air Health Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour for a decade. She is the editor and lead author of the book Health Care Without Walls: A Roadmap for Reinventing U.S. Health Care, a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow at National Academy of Social Insurance and the Hastings Center and a member of the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the National Academies of Science, and serves on the Boards of Directors of the International Rescue Committee, Research! America, and the Public Health Institute.

Dentzer graduated from Dartmouth, is a trustee emerita of the college, and chaired the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2004. She has served as a member of the Board of Overseers of Dartmouth Medical School for more than two decades. Dentzer holds an honorary master’s degree from Dartmouth and an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Muskingum University.