Immediate Release                                                                                                                                                                Contact:

January 5, 2010                                                                                                                                                                       Janet M. Caldwell

                                                                                                                                                                                                   615.500.0632

                                                                                                                                                                                                   jcaldwell@mmc.edu

Meharry Appoints the Executive Director of the newly established

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College

Daniel L. Howard, Ph.D., has been named as the first Executive Director of the newly established Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College.  Dr. Howard joins the Meharry community from Shaw University in Raleigh, N. C. where he was a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and established and directed their Institute for Health, Social and Community Research.  Prior to his tenure at Shaw, he also held faculty appointments and taught at North Carolina Central University, Durham, N.C. and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.

He received his bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in Policy Development and Program Evaluation, with an emphasis on Health Policy, at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of Education and Human Development.  Howard completed post graduate work in Public Health and Social Work at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and School of Social Work as a Paul Cornerly/Ford Foundation Scholar.  He also served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Services Research at renowned Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where he also holds an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow.  In addition to his leadership of the Center for Health Policy, he will have academic appointments at both Meharry and the Vanderbilt University School of Arts and Science.

 Dr. Howard’s research and teaching interests include the examination of epidemiologic patterns of health outcomes that disproportionately affect African Americans, racial health disparities, minority health, health services research and health policy, policy analysis and implementation, program development and implementation, health economics and medical sociology.  His doctoral dissertation explored the racial dimensions of Medicare’s Prospective Payment System and he is the author of over forty peer reviewed publications.  He has received grant funding from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

 Howard was selected to lead the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy after a national search. The Center was established with a $9 million initial endowment gift from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) along with other funding totaling $18.2 million.

The RWJF Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College was created to increase the number and diversity of those with formal training in health policy and will serve as a think tank for the pressing health care issues of the day.  Its goal is to re-shape the future of America’s health policies by creating a more inclusive pool of experts trained in health policy and allied disciplines.

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