With more than thirty years of executive experience, Debbie Cunningham has served as a Senior Vice President, Service Line Executive, Hospital President, and Chief Nursing Officer in a heavily matrixed quaternary care organization. She has extensive experience in all aspects of hospital based acute care, as well as behavioral health inpatient and outpatient services, and in building an integrated continuum of care service line for children, adolescents, and adults. Most recently Cunningham has been a consultant with Sheppard Pratt Solutions, and the Interim Vice President for the Behavioral Health Service Line at Main Line Health.
Cunningham has a passion for addressing the stigma associated with behavioral health issues, as well as improving access to care. She has developed successful strategies for ED avoidance and holding, crisis care, IOP and PHP programs, telepsychiatry, geropsychiatry, ECT and TMS, programs, inpatient consultation services, integration of behavioral health into primary care, and integration of primary care into behavioral health.
Cunningham is a Robert Woods Johnson Executive Fellow, and holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Alabama, a post-Masters degree as an Adult/Geriatric Nurse Practitioner from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a graduate degree in nursing from the University of Virginia, and undergraduate degree from West Virginia University. She is a board member of Sanctuary House Psychosocial Rehab, and a previous AHA Regional Policy Board Member.