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Healthy Communities: Exploring the Intersection of Community Development and Health

Washington, D.C. | 07/13/2010

Speakers

Nancy E. Adler, Ph.D.
Director
Center for Health and Community
University of California, San Francisco

Nancy E. Adler, Ph.D., is the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor of Psychology, Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics Vice-Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, and Director of the Center for Health and Community. She received a BA from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University. She directs an NIMH-sponsored postdoctoral program in “Psychology and Medicine: Translational Research on Stress, Behavior and Disease,” and co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation “Health and Society Scholars Program”. Her research has examined determinants and consequences of health-risking behaviors, particularly in relation to reproductive health, and on the mechanisms by which socioeconomic status determines health. As director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on SES and Health, she coordinates studies spanning social, psychological and biological determinants of health and health disparities and conducts research on the role of subjective social status in health. She has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the NIH, and been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). She recently chaired an IOM committee on the psychosocial needs of cancer patients and currently chairs a committee on women’s health research and a workshop on health effects of the Gulf oil spill. She has been awarded the UCSF Chancellor’s Award for the Advancement of Women and the Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award, the Distinguished Science Award from the American Psychological Association, and the Marion Spencer Fay Award from the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership.

Nancy O. Andrews
President and CEO
Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF)

Nancy O. Andrews is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF). LIIF is a $600 million Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that has invested over $750 million in community projects. LIIF’s investments have leveraged $5 billion in private capital for poor communities in 26 states across the U.S. Established 25 years ago, LIIF has served over 700,000 low income people by providing capital for 54,000 affordable homes for families and children,125,000 spaces of child care and 43,000 spaces in school facilities. LIIF is a national CDFI with staff and offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C. Ms. Andrews’ career spans 30 years in the community development field. In addition to her work at LIIF, she has served on numerous boards and committees, including Housing Partnership Network, Center for Housing Policy Advisory Council, Bank of America’s National Community Advisory Council, the National Housing Law Project, and the Center for International Forestry Research. She is a recognized expert on the challenges facing America’s neighborhoods and is frequently asked to testify before Congress and speak at conferences and events. Previously, Ms. Andrews served as the Deputy Director of the Ford Foundation’s Office of Program Related Investments, where she assisted in the management of a $130 million social investment portfolio. She also designed and launched the foundation’s housing policy program. Ms. Andrews was the Chief Financial Officer of the International Water Management Institute, a World Bank-supported international development organization. Additionally, Ms. Andrews has been an independent consultant on community development, social investment, financial analysis and housing policy. In this capacity, she consulted for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Treasury during the Clinton administration. Ms. Andrews received an M.S. in Urban Planning with a concentration in Real Estate Finance from Columbia University.

Melody Barnes
Director
Domestic Policy Council
Executive Office of the President

Melody Barnes is the President’s Domestic Policy Adviser and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council, which coordinates the domestic policy-making process in the White House. Before joining the White House, Barnes served as the Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to President Obama’s campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, she was the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. From 1995 to 2003, she served as Chief Counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In those capacities, and as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assistant counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, she worked extensively on civil rights and voting rights, women’s health, religious liberties, and commercial law. Barnes received her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received her law degree from the University of Michigan. She began her career as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling in New York City, and is a member of both the New York State Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar Association.

Angela Glover Blackwell
Founder and CEO
PolicyLink

Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, founded PolicyLink in 1999 and continues to drive its mission of advancing economic and social equity. Under Blackwell’s leadership, PolicyLink has become a leading voice in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, education, and infrastructure. Prior to founding PolicyLink, Blackwell served as Senior Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s Domestic and Cultural divisions. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. From 1977 to 1987, Blackwell was a partner at Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm. As a leading voice in the movement for equity in America, Blackwell is a frequent commentator for some of the nation’s top news organizations, including the Washington Post, Salon, and the Huffington Post, and has appeared regularly on such shows as public radio’s “Marketplace,” “The Tavis Smiley Show,” “Nightline,” and PBS’s “Now.” Blackwell is the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), and contributed to Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007) and The Covenant with Black America (Third World Press, 2006). Blackwell earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She serves on numerous boards and served as co-chair of the task force on poverty for the Center for American Progress.

Sandra Braunstein
Director
Division of Consumer and Community Affairs
Federal Reserve Board

Sandra Braunstein is the Director of the Board’s Division of Consumer and Community Affairs. As Director, Ms. Braunstein is principally responsible for the development and administration of Federal Reserve policies and functions related to consumer protection for financial services. She administers programs that write and review regulations for federal consumer protection laws. In addition to regulation development, the division is responsible for consumer compliance supervision and enforcement, and has oversight of the Federal Reserve System’s consumer compliance examinations of state member banks and consolidated supervision in bank holding companies. Other supervisory responsibilities housed in the division include analysis of bank and bank holding company applications for consumer-related issues, and consumer complaint handling and response. Ms. Braunstein also administers outreach efforts to the financial services industry, state, local, and federal government officials, and consumer and community organizations. Some of these responsibilities are carried out through the System’s Community Affairs programs. Community Affairs staff, housed at the Board, and in the Reserve Bank and branch offices, conduct community development activities and promote increased access to capital and credit in underserved markets. Other divisional staff develops consumer education materials and conduct research on consumer behaviors. The division also coordinates meetings of the Board’s Consumer Advisory Council, a group that includes industry, consumer, and community group representatives who provide input for the Board’s consumer protection policy decisions. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Board, Ms. Braunstein served as the executive director of the Northeast Community Development Corporation in Washington, DC, the coordinator for commercial revitalization in Alexandria, Virginia, and as a management consultant for McManis Associates, specializing in economic diversification and development studies for city and county governments. She also worked as a federal program administrator for the city of Wilmington, Delaware.

Xavier de Souza Briggs
Associate Director
Office of Management and Budget
Executive Office of the President

Xavier de Souza Briggs is Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the White House. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning (on leave) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A former community planner, Dr. Briggs’ award-winning research is about democracy, inequality, and racial and ethnic diversity in cities and metropolitan regions. He is the editor of The Geography of Opportunity (Brookings, 2005) and author of Democracy as Problem-Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities Across the Globe (MIT Press, 2008). It examines efforts to lead change on unsustainable urban growth, regional economic restructuring, and the healthy development of the next generation, drawing on cases in the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, and India. His latest book is Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty (Oxford, 2010), with co-authors Susan Popkin and John Goering. Briggs is founder and director of two innovative online resources: The Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT and Working Smarter in Community Development. Briggs holds an engineering degree from Stanford, an MPA from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in sociology and education from Columbia University.

Derek Douglas
Special Assistant to the President
Office of Urban Affairs
Executive Office of the President

Douglas has served as Washington Counsel to New York Governor David A. Paterson and Director of Governor Paterson’s Washington, D.C. Office. In this capacity, Douglas served as the Governor’s chief architect for federal policy and oversaw federal policy development and advocacy on domestic, economic, and urban policy issues for the State of New York. Prior to his appointment in 2007, Douglas served as Associate Director of Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress where he founded and served as Director of the Economic Mobility Program. Prior to joining the Center, Douglas was a Counsel at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc (LDF). Douglas graduated from the University of Michigan with Highest Honors in Economics and from the Yale Law School.

Elizabeth Duke
Governor
Federal Reserve Board

Elizabeth A. Duke took office as a Federal Reserve Board Governor on August 5, 2008, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2012. Prior to her appointment to the Board, Ms. Duke was Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of TowneBank, a Virginia-based community bank. Prior to this, she was an Executive Vice President at Wachovia Bank, and an Executive Vice President at SouthTrust Bank. Earlier in her career, Ms. Duke was President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Tidewater, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Ms. Duke served on the Board of Directors of the American Bankers Association from 1999 to 2006, and served as its Chairman from 2004 to 2005. She also served on the Board of Directors and as President of the Virginia Bankers Association. From 1998 to 2000, Ms. Duke served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. She has also served as a member of the Fannie Mae National Advisory Council. Aside from her work in the banking industry, Ms. Duke has held many civic positions, including service on the boards of directors of the Virginia Council on Economic Education, the Hampton Roads Partnership, the Old Dominion University Foundation, and the Economics Club of Hampton Roads. She also served on the Virginia Legislative Subcommittee to Study Capital Access and Business Financing and served on the Board of Commissioners of the Norfolk Airport Authority. Ms. Duke, a Virginia native, was born in July 1952. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.B.A. from Old Dominion University. She is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking and the Virginia Bankers School of Bank Management.

David J. Erickson, Ph.D.
Director
Center for Community Development Investments
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

David J. Erickson, Ph.D. is director of the Center for Community Development Investments at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and edits the Federal Reserve journal Community Development Investment Review. His research areas in the Community Development Department of the Federal Reserve include community development finance, affordable housing, economic development, and institutional changes that benefit low-income communities. He recently served as an editor of a joint research project with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program studying areas of concentrated poverty in the United States and was also an editor of a recently released collection of research papers and essays on the Community Reinvestment Act, which was recently translated into Chinese by the People’s Bank of China. He has five years of experience in the affordable housing industry working for government, nonprofit, and private sector employers. Erickson has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on economic history and public policy. He also holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley and an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College. His book on the history of community development, The Housing Policy Revolution: Networks and Neighborhoods, was published in 2009 by the Urban Institute Press.

Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D.
President
Institute of Medicine

Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D., is President of the Institute of Medicine. He served as Provost of Harvard University from 1997 to 2001, following thirteen years as Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. He has devoted most of his academic career to the fields of health policy and medical decision making. His past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations. Dr. Fineberg helped found and served as president of the Society for Medical Decision Making and also served as consultant to the World Health Organization. At the Institute of Medicine, he has chaired and served on a number of panels dealing with health policy issues, ranging from AIDS to new medical technology. He also served as a member of the Public Health Council of Massachusetts (1976-1979), as chairman of the Health Care Technology Study Section of the National Center for Health Services Research (1982-1985), and as president of the Association of Schools of Public Health (1995-1996). Dr. Fineberg is co-author of the books Clinical Decision Analysis, Innovators in Physician Education, and The Epidemic that Never Was, an analysis of the controversial federal immunization program against swine flu in 1976. He has co-edited several books on such diverse topics as AIDS prevention, vaccine safety, and understanding risk in society. He has also authored numerous articles published in professional journals. Dr. Fineberg is the recipient of several honorary degrees and the Joseph W. Mountin Prize from the US Centers for Disease Control. He earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.

David W. Fleming, M.D.
Director and Health Officer for Public Health
Seattle & King County

David W. Fleming, M.D., is Director and Health Officer for Public Health – Seattle & King County, a large metropolitan health department with 1900 employees, 39 sites, and a budget of $296 million, serving a resident population of 1.8 million people. Department activities include core prevention programs, environmental health, community oriented primary care, emergency medical services, correctional health services, Public Health preparedness, and community-based public health assessment and practices. Prior to assuming this role, Dr. Fleming directed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Strategies Program. In this capacity, Dr. Fleming was responsible for the creation, development, and oversight of cross-cutting programs targeting diseases and conditions disproportionately affecting the world’s poorest people and countries. He oversaw the Foundation’s portfolios in vaccine-preventable diseases, nutrition, newborn and child health, leadership, emergency relief, and cross-cutting strategies to improve access to health tools in developing countries. Dr. Fleming has also served as the Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While at CDC, Dr. Fleming led efforts to develop the agency’s scientific and programmatic capabilities, and served as the principal source of scientific and programmatic expertise in CDC’s Office of the Director. He provided oversight of CDC’s global health portfolio through its Office of Global Health, and also oversaw the Director’s offices of Minority Health, Women’s Health, and the Associate Director for Science. Dr. Fleming has published scientific articles on a wide range of public health issues. He has served on a number of Institute of Medicine and federal advisory committees, the Boards of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, as President of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and as the State Epidemiologist of Oregon. Dr. Fleming received his medical degree from the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. He is board certified in internal medicine and preventive medicine and serves on the faculty of the departments of public health at both the University of Washington and Oregon Health Sciences University.

James J. Heckman, Ph.D.
Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics
University of Chicago

James J. Heckman, Ph.D., is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he has served since 1973. In 2000, he shared the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Daniel McFadden. Heckman directs the Economics Research Center and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School for Public Policy. In addition, he is the Professor of Science and Society in University College Dublin and a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. Heckman received his B.A. in mathematics from Colorado College in 1965 and his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 1971. His work has been devoted to the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation, with special emphasis on models of individuals and disaggregated groups, and to the problems and possibilities created by heterogeneity, diversity, and unobserved counterfactual states. He developed a body of new econometric tools that address these issues. His research has given policymakers important new insights into areas such as education, job-training, the importance of accounting for general equilibrium in the analysis of labor markets, anti-discrimination law, and civil rights. He demonstrated a strong causal effect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in promoting African-American economic progress. He has recently demonstrated that the high school dropout rate is increasing in the U.S. He has studied the economic benefits of sorting in the labor market, the ineffectiveness of active labor market programs, and the economic returns to education. His recent research focuses on inequality, human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood. He is currently conducting new social experiments on early childhood interventions and reanalyzing old experiments. He is also studying the emergence of the underclass in the U.S. and Western Europe. Heckman has published over 260 articles and several books. His most recent books include: Evaluating Human Capital Policy, and Law and Employment: Lessons From Latin America and the Caribbean (with C. Pagés), Volume 6 (Parts 1 and 2) of the Handbook of Econometrics (with E. Leamer), and Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law (with R. Nelson and L. Cabatingan). He is currently finishing a book on the problem of noncognitive skills in America. Heckman has received numerous awards for his work, including the John Bates Clark Award of the American Economic Association in 1983, the 2005 and 2007 Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics from the Journal of Econometrics, , the 2005 Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labor Economics, the 2005 Ulysses Medal from the University College Dublin, the 2007 Theodore W. Schultz Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association, the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic, awarded by the International Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzú Centre in 2008, and the Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children Award from the Society for Research in Child Development in 2009. He is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and the Journal of Applied Econometrics. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA; a member of the American Philosophical Society; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Econometric Society; the Society of Labor Economics; the American Statistical Association; and the International Statistical Institute.

Douglas Jutte, M.D., M.P.H.
Professor of Medicine
University of California, Berkeley

Douglas Jutte, M.D., M.P.H., is a physician and population health researcher. He is an assistant professor in the Division of Community Health and Human Development in UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He teaches in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program and is Associate Director of the Health and Medical Sciences Masters degree program. His research interests focus on health resilience and vulnerability in children, and the biological links through which social-contextual factors contribute to children’s long-term medical, psychosocial and cognitive outcomes. He has a long-standing collaboration with the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and utilizes their unique longitudinal population health database for child health research. He has published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Epidemiology and Academic Pediatrics. Jutte received his MD from Harvard Medical School; he also has a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley and a BA from Cornell University. His post-doctoral research training was through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program. He continues his clinical work as a neonatal hospitalist attending high-risk deliveries and caring for healthy and ill newborns at a local community hospital.

Howard K. Koh, M.D.
Assistant Secretary for Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Howard K. Koh, M.D., serves as the 14th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2009. As the Assistant Secretary for Health, Dr. Koh oversees the HHS Office of Public Health and Science, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Office of the Surgeon General. He also serves as senior public health advisor to the Secretary. At the Office of Public Health and Science, he leads an array of interdisciplinary programs relating to disease prevention, health promotion, the reduction of health disparities, women’s and minority health, HIV/AIDS, vaccine programs, physical fitness and sports, bioethics, population affairs, blood supply, research integrity and human research protections. In these various roles, he is dedicated to the mission of creating better public health systems for prevention and care so that all people can reach their highest attainable standard of health. Dr. Koh previously served as the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health, Associate Dean for Public Health Practice, and Director of the Division of Public Health Practice at the Harvard School of Public Health. At Harvard, he also served as the principal investigator of multiple research grants related to community-based participatory research, cancer disparities affecting underserved and minority populations, tobacco control and emergency preparedness. He was also Director of the Harvard School of Public Health Center for Public Health Preparedness, which promotes education about bioterrorism, pandemic influenza, and other emerging health threats. He has published over 200 articles in the medical and public health literature. Dr. Koh served as Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1997-2003) after being appointed by Governor William Weld. As Commissioner, Dr. Koh led the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which included a wide range of health services, four hospitals, and a staff of more than 3,000 professionals. In this capacity, he emphasized the power of prevention and strengthened the state’s commitment to eliminating health disparities. During his service, the state saw advances in areas such as tobacco control, cancer screening, bioterrorism response after 9/11 and anthrax, health issues of the homeless, newborn screening, organ donation, suicide prevention and international public health partnerships. Dr. Koh graduated from Yale College (where he was President of the Yale Glee Club) and the Yale University School of Medicine. He completed postgraduate training at Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, serving as chief resident in both hospitals. He has earned board certification in four medical fields: internal medicine, hematology, medical oncology, and dermatology, as well as a Master of Public Health degree from Boston University. At Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, he was Professor of Dermatology, Medicine and Public Health as well as Director of Cancer Prevention and Control. He has earned numerous awards and honors for interdisciplinary accomplishments in medicine and public health, including the Distinguished Service Award from the American Cancer Society, the Drs. Jack E. White/LaSalle D. Leffall Cancer Prevention Award from the American Association for Cancer Research and the Intercultural Cancer Council, and the Dr. Harold P. Freeman Lectureship Award. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Koh as a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board (2000-2002). A past Chair of the Massachusetts Coalition for a Health Future (the group that pushed for the Commonwealth’s groundbreaking tobacco control initiative), Dr. Koh was named by the New England Division of the American Cancer Society as “one of the most influential persons in the fight against tobacco during the last 25 years”. Other awards include being named to the K100 (the 100 leading Korean Americans in the first century of Korean immigration to the United States), the Boston University School of Public Health Distinguished Alumni Award (the highest award of the School) and an honorary degree from Merrimack College. In recognition of his national contributions to the field of early detection and prevention of melanoma, the Boston Red Sox designated him a “Medical All Star” (2003) which included the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park. Dr. Koh and his wife, Dr. Claudia Arrigg, are the proud parents of three children.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A.
President
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national leader in transforming America’s health systems so people live healthier lives and receive the health care they need. A practicing physician with business credentials and hands-on experience developing national health policy, she was drawn to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by the opportunity, as she puts it, to “alter the trajectory and to push society to change for the better.” Driven by the belief that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a steward of private resources that must be used in the public’s interest, particularly to help the most vulnerable, Lavizzo-Mourey combines the values she learned as a doctor—commitment to others, a sense of altruism—with the skills and knowledge from her business training—the importance of measuring results and outcomes, of clear accountability, of taking a disciplined approach to managing resources and motivating people. Through it all, she is guided by the conviction that philanthropy is about simultaneously improving individual lives, transforming systems and in turn, achieving lasting social change. Lavizzo-Mourey was a leader in academic medicine, government service and her medical specialty of geriatrics before joining RWJF in 2001 as senior vice president and director of the health care group. Previously, at the University of Pennsylvania, she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of medicine and health care systems and director of Penn’s Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies. Raised in Seattle by physician parents, Lavizzo-Mourey earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania; and trained in Geriatrics at Penn. Always a physician as well as an agent for wide-scale social change, she still treats patients at a community health clinic in New Brunswick, N.J. She and her husband of more than 30 years have two adult children.

James S. Marks, M.D., M.P.H.
Senior Vice President
Health Group
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

James S. Marks, M.D., M.P.H., senior vice president, directs all program and administrative activities of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Group. This includes the Foundation’s work in childhood obesity, public health and vulnerable populations. Prior to joining RWJF in December 2004, Marks retired as assistant surgeon general after serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion for almost a decade. Throughout his tenure at CDC, Marks developed and advanced systematic ways to prevent and detect diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, reduce tobacco use and address the nation’s growing epidemic of obesity. A national leader in public health who has been an advocate of strengthening public health systems and services for more than 25 years, Marks has received numerous federal, state, and private awards, including the U.S. Public Health Service Distinguished Service Award, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists’ Pump Handle Award, the Association of State and Territorial Chronic Disease Directors’ Award for Excellence, the American Cancer Society’s Distinguished Service Award, and the National Arthritis Foundation’s Special Award of Appreciation. In 2004, he was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine and currently serves on its Membership Committee. He is also vice chair of the board of directors of C-Change, whose members are the nation’s key cancer leaders from government, business, and nonprofit sectors. He has published extensively in the areas of maternal and child health, health promotion and chronic disease prevention, and has served on many government and nonprofit committees devoted to improving the public’s health. Born in Buffalo, New York, he received an M.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He trained as a pediatrician at the University of California at San Francisco, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale University, where he received his M.P.H. He and his wife, Judi, a retired high school guidance counselor, live in Princeton and have two children, both pursuing careers in medicine.

Sister Lillian Murphy, RSM
President and CEO
Mercy Housing

Sister Lillian Murphy, RSM has been Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Housing since 1987. Under her leadership, Mercy Housing has grown to become an award-winning national not-for-profit housing organization operating in 41 states and the District of Columbia and serving over 128,000 people in more than 37,000 units of quality affordable homes. Sister Lillian is a national spokesperson for the cause of affordable housing and the needs of persons who are economically poor. She believes that providing safe, decent, quality housing for everyone, regardless of income, is a matter of economic and social justice. She holds a Masters Degree in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in Social Science from the University of San Francisco (USF). Prior to becoming President and CEO of Mercy Housing, Sister Lillian worked in the health care field for 16 years. In 1998, the USF recognized Sister Lillian by awarding her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. In 1999, she received the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California’s Affordable Housing Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement. Sister Lillian is currently serving on the boards of the National Housing Trust and Alegent Health. She is a past member of the Affordable Housing Advisory Council for the Federal Home Loan Bank, the advisory committee of the Bank of America Community Development Bank, the Housing Impact Advisory Council of the Federal National Mortgage Association. She has served on the boards of the Catholic Health Corporation, Catholic Healthcare West, the Colorado Trust, the Low Income and Investment Fund, and as a Public Interest Director for the Federal Home Loan Bank in Topeka, Kansas. A Sister of Mercy from the Burlingame, California community for 50 years, Sister Lillian resides in Denver.

Preston D. Pinkett III
Vice President
Social Investment Program
Prudential

Preston D. Pinkett III is vice president and head of Prudential’s Social Investment Program, which has a willingness to take informed risks in socially responsible investments that help create healthy, sustainable communities. Prudential’s Social Investment Program has a portfolio of $300 million and has invested more than $1 billion throughout the U.S. Prior to joining Prudential in 2007, Mr. Pinkett was the senior vice president for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority where he managed funding and development programs to spur economic development in New Jersey. He also has served as senior vice president with PNC Bank, where he founded and managed the PNC Development Bank and community development investment and lending activities; and senior vice president at Chemical Bank, New Jersey, responsible for community and economic development, government banking, government relations and regulatory compliance. Mr. Pinkett is an officer of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Montclair State University and University Ventures; and is a board member of Newark Museum, New Jersey School Development Authority, Council of NJ Grant Makers and CityWorks. Mr. Pinkett has a BS degree in economics from Cornell University and an MBA degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lisa Richter
Principal and Co-founder
GPS Capital Partners, LLC

Lisa Richter is principal and co-founder of GPS Capital Partners, LLC, a consultancy that assists foundations, banks and institutional investors in the design and execution of profitable investment strategy that enhances public good. Her work spans asset classes, return expectations and issue areas, frequently incorporating place-based and sector focus to increase equitable access to opportunities, including health, education and sustainable community development. Lisa co-designed and serves as lead trainer for the PRI Institute sponsored by the PRI Makers Network, co-authored Equity Advancing Equity (an analysis of impact investing for community foundations) and is preparing a guide to health-focused impact investing with Grantmakers In Health. She brings over two decades of fund management and development finance experience from the National Community Investment Fund and ShoreBank and has served as advisor to the Bank of America National Community Advisory Council, Wall Street Without Walls, 2009 Clinton Global Initiative, and New Frontiers in Philanthropy (a project of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University), vice-chair of the Community Development Financial Institutions Coalition, director of the Social Investment Forum, and steering committee member of the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition. She holds a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Ana V. Diez Roux, Ph.D., M.D., M.P.H.
Director
Center for Social Epidemiology and Community Health
University of Michigan

Ana V. Diez Roux is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Diez Roux’s research areas include social epidemiology, environmental health effects, urban health, psychosocial factors in health, health disparities, and cardiovascular disease epidemiology. She has been an international leader the investigation of neighborhood and community health effects and the application of multilevel analysis in public health. Other areas of research include the integration of social and biologic factors in health research, complex systems approaches to population health, the impact of stress on cardiovascular disease, and air pollution effects on health. She has been Principal Investigator of several NIH funded projects and is a frequent invited speaker at international conferences on the social determinants of health, neighborhood health effects, and multilevel analysis. Dr. Diez Roux is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and serves on numerous national review and advisory committees. She was recently awarded the Wade Hampton Frost Award for her contributions to public health by the American Public Health Association. Dr. Diez Roux received her MD from the University of Buenos Aires, and her MPH and PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Ron Sims
Deputy Secretary
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Ron Sims was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 6, 2009, and sworn in as the Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on May 8, 2009. As the second most senior official at HUD, Sims is responsible for managing the Department’s day-to-day operations, a nearly $40 billion annual operating budget, and the agency’s 8,500 employees. Sims previously served as the Executive for the King County, Washington, the 13th largest county in the nation in a metropolitan area of 1.8 million residents and 39 cities including the cities of Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond. While serving three terms, Sims was nationally recognized for his work on transportation, homelessness, climate change, health care reform, urban development and affordable housing. His leadership in affordable housing and multiple community and housing partnerships have funded 5,632 units of housing during his 12 years. One of the hallmarks of the Sims Administration in King County was the integration of environmental, social equity and public health policies that produced groundbreaking work on climate change, health care reform, affordable housing, mass transit, environmental protection, land use, and equity and social justice. Sims is also a proponent of Smart Growth programs and the preservation of green space before it is lost to development. The policies he implemented in King County stopped costly sprawl and resulted in 96 percent of new construction being concentration in urban areas with only 4% in rural areas. Over the years Sims developed a reputation as a tireless legislator, working on a diverse palette of issues that led to advances in the areas of the environment, education, public safety and the protection of workers’ rights. He credits his drive in part with marching alongside his politically active parents in the 1950′s and 1960′s during the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Those experiences honed in him a passion for civil rights issues that has been a guidepost throughout his career. Sims was named Leader of the Year by American City and County Magazine in July, 2008 and was recognized as one of Governing Magazine’s Government Officials of the Year in 2007. He has been honored with national awards from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Committee for Quality Assurance. Sims joined Senator Edward Kennedy and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as recipients of the 2008 Health Quality Award from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. Sims and King County are also recipients of HUD’s prestigious Robert L. Woodson Jr. Affordable Communities Award for 2005. Born in Spokane, Washington in 1948, Sims is a graduate of Central Washington University.

Michael A. Stegman
Director of Policy and Housing
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Michael A. Stegman is the Director of Policy and Housing for the Program on Human and Community Development at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He serves as the Foundation’s lead observer of domestic policy issues, working to translate policy trends and position program strategies in affordable housing, community change, mental health, juvenile justice, education, and urban and regional policy within the larger context of local, state and national policy developments. Stegman is a member of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank Community Development Advisory Council and a former Fellow of the Urban Land Institute. He has served on several national boards, including the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and One Economy Corporation. Prior to joining the Foundation he was the MacRae Professor of Public Policy, Planning, and Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chairman of the Department of Public Policy and founding director of the Center for Community Capitalism. In addition, he has been a consultant to the Fannie Mae Foundation, HUD, the Treasury Department, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI), and the U.S. General Accounting Office. During his tenure as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at HUD, Stegman was named as one of Washington’s 100 most influential decision makers by the National Journal. Stegman has written extensively on housing and urban policy, community development, financial services for the poor, and asset development policies. While at HUD, he was founding editor of Cityscape, a journal of urban policy research. Stegman received his BA from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and his Masters and Ph.D. in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

S. Leonard Syme, Ph.D.
Professor of Community Health and Human Development
University of California, Berkeley

S. Leonard Syme, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health (Emeritus) at the University of California, Berkeley. His major research interest has been psychosocial risk factors such as job stress, social support and poverty. In doing this research, he has studied San Francisco bus drivers; Japanese living in Japan, Hawaii and California; British civil servants; and people living in Alameda County, California. He has been a visiting professor at universities in England and Japan. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has received several honors related to his teaching and research, among them the Lilienfeld Award for Excellence in Teaching, the J.D. Bruce Award from the American College of Physicians for Distinguished Contributions in Preventive Medicine, and the University of California Distinguished Emeritus Professor Award. Dr. Syme is currently Principal Investigator of Health Research for Action Center which is attempting to empower people and communities using printed materials, television, and community resource development.

David R. Williams, M.D.
Professor of Public Health
Harvard University

David R. Williams, M.D., is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies and an Affiliate of the Sociology Department at Harvard University. His first 6 years as a faculty member were at Yale University where he held appointments in both Sociology and Public Health. The next 14 years were at the University of Michigan where he served as the Harold Cruse Collegiate Professor of Sociology, a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Social Research and a Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health. He holds a master’s degree in public health from Loma Linda University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan. He is an internationally recognized authority on social influences on health. His research has focused on trends and determinants of socioeconomic and racial disparities in health, the effects of racism on health and the ways in which religious involvement can affect health. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly papers in scientific journals and edited collections and his research has appeared in leading journals in sociology, psychology, medicine, public health and epidemiology. He has served as a member of the editorial board of 8 scientific journals and as a reviewer for more than 50 others. According to ISI Essential Science Indicators, he was one of the Top 10 Most Cited Researchers in the Social Sciences during the decade 1995 to 2005. The Journal of Black Issues in Higher Education, ranked him as the 2nd Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences in 2006. In 2001, he was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2004, he received one of the inaugural Decade of Behavior Research Awards and in 2007, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been involved in the development of health policy at the national level in the U.S. He has served a on the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and on six panels for the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has held elected and appointed positions in professional organizations, such as the American Sociological Association, Academy Health and the American Public Health Association. Currently, he is a member of the of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health. His current research includes studying the health of Black Caribbean immigrants in the U.S., examining how race-related stressors (racial discrimination in the U.S. and exposure to torture during Apartheid in South Africa) can affect health, and assessing the ways in which religious involvement is related to health.

Videos

Video montage of speakers from the conference

Douglas Jutte, University of California, Berkeley

James Marks, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Jo Ivey Boufford, New York Academy of Medicine

Lisa Richter, GPS Capital Partners

Nancy Andrews, on Healthy Communities

Ronda Kotelchuck, Primary Care Development Corporation

Resources

Conference Brochure

Conference Event Page

Overcoming Obstacles to Health
This RWJF report to the Commission to Build a Healthier America provides a profile of the current state of health in America, focusing specifically on the role that social factors like income, education, and race and ethnicity play in Americans’ health and the areas that hold promise for improving the opportunities for all Americans to live healthier and more productive lives.

Beyond Health Care: New Directions to a Healthier America
This report describes the Commission to Build a Healthier America’s work and provides recommendations for moving forward to ensure all Americans have an opportunity to lead healthier lives.

Community Development Investment Review
Can community development finance help “bend the cost curve” for health care? That is one of the questions motivating this issue of the Review. In light of the insights and research from the authors in this volume, the answer is a resounding yes. The reality is that people who live in supportive, connected, and economically-thriving communities tend to be healthier. Healthier communities would lead to billions of dollars of social savings from fewer visits to the emergency room, fewer chronic diseases, and a population more capable of making a contribution as healthy productive citizens.

DC Metro System: Disparities in Health
This map shows life span disparities across the DC Metro system, reflecting differences in wealth, education and environment across all community residents. The differences are even more dramatic – sometimes double – if you compare black and white residents.

Neurons to Neighborhoods: Executive Summary
Commissioned by the Institute of Medicine, From Neurons to Neighborhoods is the product of a two-and-a-half-year project during which 17 individuals, as a committee, evaluated and integrated the current science of early childhood development.

Unbanked by Choice
This is the first report from a multi-phase survey of 1,000 banked and 1,000 unbanked households in greater Los Angeles, randomly selected from eight low-income study areas for in-person interviews at several intervals over the course of a year (July 2009 to July 2010).

The Poor Pay More – Poverty’s High Cost to Health
This report describes many of the ways in which being poor is bad for one’s health and points to policies that have the potential for restoring the prospect of good health to the lives of the poor.

Banking and Community Perspectives
This issue of Banking and Community Perspectives focuses on nonlegislative efforts to foster healthier communities, particularly in low- and moderate-income areas. These efforts are led by both public and private organizations across the Federal Reserve’s Eleventh District.