Expert Participants

Sudhir Anand is a world-recognized development microeconomist. He has published widely on economic inequality and poverty; undernutrition; human development; population ethics; health economics; human resources for health; health inequalities; and other subjects in economics and health. He is co-author of The Cost of Inaction: Case Studies from Rwanda and Angola. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford, UK, and Senior Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

John Auerbach was appointed Massachusetts's Commissioner of Public Health in April, 2007. Under his leadership the department has developed new and innovative programs to address racial and ethnic disparities, to promote wellness (including the Mass in Motion campaign), to combat chronic disease and to support the successful implementation of the state's health care reform initiative.

Matthew Baumgart is the Senior Director of Government Affairs for the Alzheimer's Association, where he leads the Association's federal and state government affairs efforts as well as its public health project with the Centers for Disease Control.

Prior to joining the Association, Baumgart worked for nearly 18 years in the United States Senate for then-Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of Delaware and as Legislative Director for Senator Barbara Boxer of California.

Lisa Belkin is The Huffington Post’s Senior Columnist on Life/Work/Family. She joined HuffPost Parents after a multi-decade stint at The New York Times, where she was variously a national correspondent (based in Houston), a medical reporter, a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the creator of the Life’s Work column and the Motherlode blog.

Dr. Paul Biddinger, M.D., is an attending physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine. He graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine after receiving his undergraduate degree from Princeton University. He completed his residency in emergency medicine with Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency and served as Chief Resident.
 

Robert J. Blendon is Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at Harvard School of Public Health. He is Senior Associate Dean, directing HSPH's new Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development. Between 1987 and 1996 he served as Chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr.

Barry R. Bloom is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Joan and Jack Jacobson Professor of Public Health and former Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Bloom is widely recognized for his work in infectious diseases, vaccines, and global health. He served as a consultant to the White House on International Health Policy and has been extensively involved with the World Health Organization (WHO) for more than 40 years.

Patsy Brannon presently serves as a member of the Steering Committee for the International Harmonization and Standardization of Monitoring Vitamin D Status and Chair of the American Society of Nutrition's Public Policy Committee.

David Canning is a British economist. He is Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences and Professor of Economics and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cambridge University and is deputy director of the Program on the Global Demography of Aging. Before assuming his role at the Harvard School of Public Health, Canning held faculty positions at the London School of Economics, Cambridge University, Columbia University, and Queen’s University Belfast, where he received his B.A. in economics and mathematics in 1979.

Helen Clark became the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme in April 2009, and is the first woman to lead the organization. She is also the Chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and departments working on development issues.

Alan Court is Senior Advisor to the United Nation’s Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Malaria. Before joining the UNSE office, Mr Court was the Director of the UNICEF Programme Division and had previously been posted in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. As the Director of the UNICEF Programme Division, he led the division’s strategy development, programme guidance and implementation processes and was responsible for seeing UNICEF’s programs were focused on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

You can view Charles' full profile at Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine.

Douglas Dockery is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He and his colleagues have studied the health effects of air pollution exposures in populations who have been followed for up to 25 years. That research has increasingly pointed to combustion-related particles as being causally linked to increased morbidity and mortality, even at the relatively low concentrations observed in developed countries today.

Felton Earls is professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Human Behavior and Development at Harvard School of Public Health. He joined the Harvard Medical School faculty in 1974, became the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Child Psychiatry and director of the Division of Child Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis in 1981, and returned to Harvard in 1989. Dr. Earls is a member of the Committee for Human Rights at the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Arnold Epstein is John H. Foster Professor and chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health, and chief of the Section on Health Services and Policy Research in the Department of Medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Epstein's research interests focus on quality of care and access to care for disadvantaged populations. Recently, his efforts have focused on public reporting of quality performance data and Medicaid policies. He has published more than 130 articles on these and other topics.

David R. Franz served in the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for 23 of 27 years on active duty and retired as Colonel. He served as Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and as Deputy Commander of the Medical Research and Materiel Command. Prior to joining the Command, he served as Group Veterinarian for the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

Dr. Adhanom Ghebreyesus has served as Minister of Health for the Federal Republic of Ethiopia since 2005. He is widely regarded for leading a process of systems wide health reforms that have substantially improved access to health services and key outcomes. Dr. Adhanom Ghebreyesus is a past Board Chair of the Global Fund Against HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria; the Partnership for Maternal, Neonatal Clinical Health; and the Roll Back Malaria initiative. Dr. Adhanom Ghebreyesus is a PhD graduate of the University of Nottingham.

Carolyn Gregoire is the Associate Lifestyle Editor of the Huffington Post. She has spoken at TEDxYouth, and her writing has also appeared in BlackBook Magazine, Seventeen and Huffington. Magazine. 

Rev. Hurmon E. Hamilton was born in San Francisco, California and raised from the age of two in Coushatta, Louisiana as the only child of the Rev. Clarence and Mrs. Ola Batchie Berry. He graduated from Coushatta High School in 1982 and continued his education at Grambling State University (GSU). While at GSU he became the first Student Body President in GSU's history elected to the Louisiana Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities. Rev. Hamilton earned a B.A.

Rogene Henderson has research interests in two major areas. She has had a long-term interest in the biochemistry of the lung, particularly the surfactant-lining layer. She has developed in vivo screening tests for pulmonary toxicants based on analysis of bronchoalveolar washings. A second area of interest is the pharmacokinetics of inhaled xenobiotics (particularly vapors) and their metabolites. In both areas, Henderson has studied the use of biological markers of exposure and of effects to link environmental exposure to induced disease.

Phil Hilts became director of the Knight Fellowships upon the retirement in June 2008 of Boyce Rensberger. He is the author of six books and a prize-winning health and was a science reporter for both The New York Times and The Washington Post. His journalism career began in 1968, and he was the Times reporter who broke the story of the tobacco industry’s 40-year cover-up of its own research showing that tobacco was harmful and addictive.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin has a distinguished record as an academic, policy adviser, and strategist. Currently he is the President of the American Action Forum and a Commissioner on the Congressionally-chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Frank B. Hu is Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hu is Co-director of the Program in Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention at HSPH. He is also the Director of Harvard Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (TREC) center. His research is mainly focused on dietary and lifestyle determinants of obesity and type 2 diabetes. His group has conducted extensive analyses on sleep deprivation and shift work and risk of obesity and diabetes in the Nurses' Health Study. Dr.

Dr. Mette Kalager is a post-doctoral researcher at Telemark Hospital, Norway, and visiting scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Kalager is a trained surgeon and has been working at Telemark Hospital and Oslo University Hospital as a general surgeon and breast cancer surgeon. She also has training from general practice.

Nancy Kane is Professor of Management in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Associate Dean for Educational Programs at Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the financial and managerial performance of health care organizations. Recent and ongoing projects include:

Jerold Kayden is the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He was project director and principal investigator of the Harvard-Netherlands Project on Climate Change, Water, Land Development and Adaption. He also previously served as Co-Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and as Director of the Master in Urban Planning Degree Program. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between law and the built environment and public-private urban development.

Felicia Knaul is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative, where she serves as the Secretariat for the Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries.

Correspondent and Boston Bureau Chief, Reuters
 

Ana Langer is the Director of the Women and Health Initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health and is a Professor of the Practice of Public Health in its Department of Global Health and Population. She is a physician specialized in pediatrics and neonatology, as well as a reproductive health expert, public health researcher, and advocate for women’s reproductive health and rights. Prior to this, Dr. Langer was the President and CEO of EngenderHealth from 2005-2010.

Heidi Larson previously headed Global Communication for Immunization at UNICEF and Chaired the Advocacy Task Force for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). Her research specializes in the analysis and evaluation of health and development programs with particular attention to social and political factors that can affect policies and programs. Her particular focus is on risk and rumor management in health programs and technologies, especially vaccines -- from clinical trials to delivery -- and building public trust. Dr.

Lucian L. Leape, MD, is an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 1988, he was Professor of Surgery and Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Medical School.

Samuel Loewenberg is a journalist who covers the intersection of global health, business, government and politics. He was the 2011-2012 Nieman Foundation Global Health Reporting Fellow at Harvard University. He is currently an 
Associate Research Faculty at Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

Richard Malley's laboratory studies the acquired and innate immune responses to the common human pathogen, Streptococcus pneumoniae. A major area of interest of the laboratory is the development of alternatives to the expensive and serotype-dependent pneumococcal vaccines. Starting with the mucosal application of killed whole unencapsulated pneumococci, Dr.

JoAnn E. Manson is Professor of Medicine and the Elizabeth Fay Brigham Professor of Women's Health at Harvard Medical School. She also is Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, and Chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine and Co-Director of the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. An endocrinologist and epidemiologist, Dr.

Wendy Mariner is the Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law and Faculty Director of the JD-MPH dual degree program. She is also Professor of Law at BU School of Law and Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences at BU School of Medicine. Professor Mariner combines teaching and research on patient rights, risk regulation, health reform legislation, health insurance, and ERISA, and has published more than 100 articles in the legal, medical and health policy literature. She has a JD from Columbia University School of Law, LLM from New York University School of Law, and MPH.

Marie McCormick is a pediatrician with a second doctorate in health services research. Her research has focused on the effectiveness of perinatal and neonatal health services on the health of women and children with a particular concern in the outcomes of very premature infants.  She has been a senior investigator on the evaluations of two national demonstration programs (the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Perinatal Regionalization Program, and currently the federal Healthy Start Program), and of an important project in Central Harlem on enhancing access to preventive services for

W. David Montgomery is Senior Vice President of NERA Economic Consulting in Washington D.C. His recent work includes studies of Green Jobs and the costs and benefits of Clean Air Act regulations and testimony on these issues before Committees of the U.S. Congress. He was assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office, deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Energy, and he taught economics at CalTech and Stanford. He has a PhD in economics from Harvard and was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge.

Takashi Nagata is an emergency physician who responded with the Japan Medical Association to the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crises that rocked Japan in March 2011. He also is a former fellow with the Takemi Program in International Health at Harvard School of Public Health.

Ivan Oransky is the executive editor of Reuters Health and Association of Health Care Journalists treasurer. He also teaches medical journalism at New York University and blogs at Embargo Watch and Retraction Watch. He has served as managing editor, online, of Scientific American, deputy editor of The Scientist, and editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Praxis Post. Ivan earned his bachelor's at Harvard, where he was executive editor of The Harvard Crimson, and his MD at the New York University of School of Medicine.

Barry Popkin is the W R Kenan, Jr Distinguished Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Professor of Economics. He developed the Nutrition Transition concept (the study of the dynamic shifts in dietary intake and physical activity patterns and trends and obesity and other nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases). His research program focuses globally on understanding the shifts in stages of the transition and programs and policies to improve the population health linked with this transition.

Dr. Regina Rabinovich is a global health executive with over 25 years’ experience in the research, public health, and philanthropic sectors, with focus on strategy, analytics, global health product development, and the introduction and scale-up of tools and strategies resulting in impact on endemic populations. She is also the 2012-2013 ExxonMobil Malaria Scholar in Residence at Harvard University.

Susan Redline is the Peter C. Farrell Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Programs in Sleep and Cardiovascular Medicine and Sleep Medicine Epidemiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She has developed an internationally recognized research program addressing the epidemiology of sleep disorders, with a focus on understanding the genetic etiology for sleep apnea and the cardiovascular and neurocognitive consequences of sleep disorders.

Roberto J. Rodríguez serves in the White House Domestic Policy Council as Special Assistant to the President for Education. Previously, Rodríguez was Chief Education Counsel to United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. In this capacity, he managed the Democratic education agenda for the Committee and led policy development and strategy for legislation addressing early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, higher education, and adult education.

Cristine Russell is an award-winning journalist who has written about science, health and the environment for more than three decades. She is a Senior Fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy. Russell, a former national science reporter for The Washington Post, is currently a contributing editor for the Columbia Journalism Review and a correspondent for The Atlantic online.

Kathleen Sebelius was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on April 28, 2009.  Since taking office, Secretary Sebelius has led ambitious efforts to improve America’s health and enhance the delivery of human services to some of the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including young children, those with disabilities, and the elderly.
 

Jack P. Shonkoff is the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston; and Director of the university-wide Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. He also chairs the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, a multi-university, multidisciplinary body of leading scholars. Under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr.

Honourable Dr Timothy Thahane was appointed to the position of the Minister of Energy, Meteorology and Water Affairs in June 2012. Following the May 2012 General Elections, Honourable Dr Thahane was elected to the National Assembly to represent the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) Political Party for Likhetlane Constituency No. 16.
 

Abigail Trafford – author, journalist and public speaker – focuses on the new stage of the life cycle after midlife but before traditional old age. Her book – My Time: Making the Most of the Bonus Decades after 50, (Basic Books in 2004, Paperback 2005) chronicles the social revolution of living longer, healthier lives. In her Washington Post column, entitled My Time, she explores the potential in this new stage for both individuals and society.

With nearly thirty years at the forefront of the fashion industry, having graced every magazine cover from Vogue to Time, Christy Turlington Burns has established a diverse career as a model, writer, entrepreneur, spokesperson, advocate, and filmmaker. Philanthropy and service have long been a part of Christy's personal and professional mission to make a lasting impact on the world. As the daughter of a Central American mother, she has supported numerous efforts to rebuild post-war El Salvador since the early 1990's.

Michael VanRooyen is the founder and Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) at Harvard University and an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. VanRooyen is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Gail Wilensky is an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health foundation. She directed the Medicare and Medicaid programs and served in the White House as a senior adviser on health and welfare issues to President GHW Bush.

Gary Williams is Professor of Agricultural Economics and Co-Director of the Agribusiness, Food, and Consumer Economics Research Center (AFCERC) at Texas A&M University. His areas of teaching and research include commodity promotion programs, international agricultural trade and development, agricultural policy, and marketing and price analysis. He holds a PhD and an MS degree in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University and a BS in Economics from Brigham Young University. He speaks fluent Spanish and has lived and worked in Latin America throughout his career.

Dyann Wirth is Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health. An international expert in tropical disease and molecular microbiology, Ms. Wirth directs the Harvard Malaria Initiative and is past President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She is also is a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Award in Molecular Parasitology. Ms. Wirth graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin, spent one year as a Fulbright Fellow, and then completed her Ph.D.