Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist, and author, is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature and is a regular contributor to a range of public media about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. He has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences. He is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards. Dr. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow.
Lisa V. Adams, MD
Associate Dean for Global Health, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Director, Center for Health Equity at Dartmouth
Lisa V. Adams is the associate dean for Global Health, director of Global Initiatives, and a professor of medicine in the Infectious Disease and International Health Section Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is also the director of Dartmouth’s Center for Health Equity. In all her roles, she designs and leads interdisciplinary and collaborative global health programs engaging faculty, staff, and students. She also teaches global health and mentors undergraduates and medical and public health students.
Her technical area of expertise is international tuberculosis care and prevention with a focus on pediatric TB and TB/HIV health care delivery. As an international TB technical advisor, she has worked in over a dozen countries to provide technical assistance to Ministries of Health and numerous nongovernmental partners. She leads several collaborative training and research programs with academic and community partners in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Kigali, Rwanda, and Mbabane, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). Her recent focus has been on developing equitable partnerships and her popular 2019 TEDx talk is entitled “Global Health Partnerships: Check Your Privilege at the Border.”
Dr. Adams is board certified in infectious disease received her MD degree from Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine and completed her residency training in primary care/internal medicine at Cambridge Hospital.
Thomas D. Sequist, MD, MPH
Chief Medical Officer, Mass General Brigham
Thomas D. Sequist is the chief medical officer at Mass General Brigham. He oversees system-wide strategies for improving patient and clinician experiences, quality, safety, equity, pharmacy, and community health. He is a practicing general internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a professor of medicine and professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sequist’s research interests focus on quality measurement and improvement, health care equity, patient and provider education, and the innovative use of health information technology. Prior to his current role, he served as the chief quality and safety officer, then the chief patient experience and equity officer, at Partners Healthcare and also as the director of Research and Clinical Program Evaluation for Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates and Atrius Health.
Dr. Sequist is a member of the Taos Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and has conducted influential health policy research to advance our understanding of health care for Native American communities. He serves as the director of the Four Directions Summer Research Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the medical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Physician Outreach Program with the Indian Health Service.
Dr. Sequist graduated from Cornell University with a BS in chemical engineering. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Lauren A. Smith, MD, MPH
Chief Health Equity and Strategy Officer, CDC Foundation
Lauren A. Smith is the chief health equity and strategy officer for the CDC Foundation and a member of the executive team. She brings more than 25 years working at the intersection of health care delivery and management, public policy, and public health fields. Dr. Smith partners with the CDC Foundation’s other senior leaders to develop and drive strategic efforts to embed health equity across the full range of activities with an explicit focus on addressing systemic racism and other structural inequities and their impact on vulnerable populations’ health, well-being, and resiliency. In addition, she leads activities to build organizational capacity to integrate health equity into the Foundation’s practice, process, action, innovation, and organizational performance to elevate the importance of and deepen the impact.
Dr. Smith joined the Foundation from FSG where she helped drive the vision and growth of the firm to advance it mission of achieving lasting and equitable social impact. Her previous leadership roles have included serving as the medical director and then interim commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the senior strategic advisor for a national innovation and improvement network focused on reducing infant mortality, the national medical director of the Medical Legal Partnership for Children, and the medical director of the pediatric inpatient service at Boston Medical.
She has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature on health equity and the implication of social policies on child and family well-being.
Dr. Smith holds a bachelor of arts degree with honors in biology from Harvard College, a doctor of medicine degree from University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and a master of public health degree from University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.
