Brian Smedley, Ph.D., Vice President and Director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The Institute's mission is to generate policy recommendations on long-standing health equity concerns. Dr. Smedley was co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization dedicated to ensuring equity in health care reform. He previously served as Senior Program Officer in the Division of Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine, where he was 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. In 2004 Dr. Smedley was honored by the Rainbow/PUSH coalition as a "Health Trailblazer"; in 2002 he was awarded the Congressional Black Caucus "Healthcare Hero" award and the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest by the APA.

Sponsored by the University of Georgia, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Jay A. Mancini, Ph.D., Head.