Harold Cox, MSSW
Associate Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
Harold Cox is an associate professor of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). Trained as a social worker, he has extensive experience in direct services, administration, and advocacy in a variety of public health care settings. Mr. Cox is an appointee to the Massachusetts Public Health Council and served on the Special Commission on Local and Regional Public Health for Massachusetts. He is member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Cross Jurisdictional Sharing Advisory Committee.
Prior to joining BUSPH, he served for 10 years as chief public health officer for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was responsible for managing all aspects of the city's health department. During his tenure, he led the process to make Cambridge a nonsmoking city and helped to organize Clean Air Works, a regional initiative to promote smoke-free work environments. He developed a regional public health consortium to coordinate emergency preparedness and disaster response and started the Cambridge Advanced Practice Center for Emergency Preparedness.
Mr. Cox is the recipient of the American Public Health Association's Milton and Ruth Roemer Prize for Creative Local Public Health, the Rebecca Lee Award for outstanding commitment to public health from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Hilliard Award for outstanding achievement from the Massachusetts Health Officers Association. He received the Paul Revere Award for outstanding public health service from the Massachusetts Public Health Association.
John Auerbach, MBA
Senior Vice President, Federal Health, ICF
John Auerbach is the senior vice president of federal health at ICF. As such, he serves as ICF’s primary federal health expert and thought leader within the company’s public sector business. He brings more than 30 years of experience in strengthening programs at the federal, state, and local level to drive improved health outcomes for the public, especially those who are at elevated risk for poor health outcomes.
Mr. Auerbach recently came to ICF from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he served as the director of intergovernmental and strategic affairs. In this role, he was the lead strategic advisor on CDC engagement with government agencies at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels, as well as public health and other external partners. He also had oversight of CDC’s health equity workgroup and served as the chief equity officer for CDC’s COVID-19 response.
Before his position at the CDC, Mr. Auerbach was CEO of Trust for America’s Health, where he oversaw work to promote sound public health policy and make disease prevention a national priority through research, reports, communications campaigns, and government relations. Earlier in his career, he was the associate director at the CDC, where he oversaw policy and the agency’s collaborative efforts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, commercial payers, and large health systems. He also served as the acting director of the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support.
During his six years as the Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health, he developed innovative programs to promote health equity, combat chronic and infectious disease, and support the successful implementation of the state’s health care reform initiative. As Boston’s health commissioner for nine years, he directed homeless, substance abuse, and emergency medical services for the city as well as a wide range of public health division and was a board member of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Paul D. Biddinger, MD, FACEP
Chief Preparedness and Continuity Officer, Mass General Brigham
Ann L. Prestipino MPH Endowed Chair in Emergency Preparedness
Director, Center for Disaster Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine
Director, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice Program
Paul Biddinger is the chief preparedness and continuity officer at Mass General Brigham in Boston. He holds the Ann L. Prestipino MPH Endowed Chair in Emergency Preparedness and is also the director of the Center for Disaster Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Biddinger additionally serves as the director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and at the Chan School. Dr. Biddinger serves as a medical officer for the MA-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team in the National Disaster Medical System in the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Biddinger is an active researcher in the field of emergency preparedness and has lectured nationally and internationally on topics of preparedness and disaster medicine. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters on multiple topics related to disaster medicine and emergency medical operations and has responded to numerous prior disaster events, including Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, the Boston Marathon bombings, the Nepal earthquakes, and many others.
He completed his undergraduate study in international relations at Princeton University, received his MD from Vanderbilt University, and completed residency training in emergency medicine at Harvard.
Michael A. Curry, Esq.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers
Michael Curry is the president and CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (League), which represents 52 health centers, serving over one million patients throughout the state. Prior to joining the League in 2008, Mr. Curry worked for 16 years at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, mainly as senior policy advisor in the Corporate Affairs Division, which included government, public, internal and community affairs.
Mr. Curry is a past president of the Boston Branch of the NAACP and has over 20 years of dedicated service to that organization. He was elected to the National NAACP Board of Directors in 2014 and was reelected in 2017 and 2020. He now serves as chair of the National Board’s Advocacy and Policy Committee and as vice chair of the Political Action and Legislation Committee.
Mr. Curry serves on the City of Boston’s COVID-19 Health Inequities Task Force, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 Health Equity Advisory Group, and the Massachusetts Public Health Association’s Health Equity Task Force, while also coordinating the community health center response to the pandemic, in conjunction with the state Attorney General’s Office, Executive Office of Health and Human Services, various municipalities, and other partners.
He was invited to serve on the Bipartisan Policy Center’s project Public Health Forward: Modernizing the U.S. Public Health System with governors, mayors, and public health advocates from across the country. He is also an adjunct professor for the Suffolk University Moakley Center for Public Management.
Mr. Curry has received numerous local and national awards for leadership and advocacy. He earned a BA from Macalester College and a JD from New England Law School, and he graduated from the inaugural class of the Executive Leadership Council’s Pipeline to Leadership Program.
