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Moving from Science to Policy and Practice: Addressing Health Inequities
Through a Focus on Place
Brian D. Smedley, Ph.D. is Vice President and Director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC. Dr. Smedley oversees all of the operations of the Institute, which was started in 2002 with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Institute has a dual focus: to explore disparities in health and to generate policy recommendations on longstanding health equity concerns.
Formerly, Smedley was Research Director and co-founder of a communications, research and policy organization, The Opportunity Agenda (www.opportunityagenda.org), where he led the organization’s effort to center equity in state and national health reform discussions and to build the national will to expand opportunity for all. To that end, Smedley is a co-editor, along with Alan Jenkins, of a book, All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time.
Prior to helping launch The Opportunity Agenda, Smedley was a Senior Program Officer in the Division of Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), where he served as Study Director for the IOM reports, In the Nation’s Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce and Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, among other reports on diversity in the health professions and minority health research policy. Smedley came to the IOM from the American Psychological Association, where he worked on a wide range of social, health, and education policy topics in his capacity as Director for Public Interest Policy. Prior to working at the APA, Smedley served as a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among his awards and distinctions, in 2009 Smedley received the Congressional Black Caucus Congressional Leadership in Advocacy Award; in 2004 he was honored by the Rainbow/PUSH coalition as a “Health Trailblazer” award winner; in 2002 he was awarded the Congressional Black Caucus “Healthcare Hero” award; and in August, 2002, was awarded the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest by the APA. Smedley holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA.
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