About

On September 29th, 2015, the inaugural population health meeting to bring together a diverse group of population health scientists was held at The National Academy of Sciences Building, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. The conference was free and open to the public. An Opening Reception was held September 28, 2015 with opening remarks from James S. Marks, M.D., M.P.H., Executive Vice President, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The September 2015 meeting is the first of a series of annual meetings aimed at connecting population health scientists from diverse disciplines. These conferences are designed to foster a Culture of Health in the U.S. and improve population health by creating innovative partnerships between researchers and stakeholders in different institutional settings from multiple disciplinary backgrounds. The field of population health science continues to grow, but until now there has been no shared professional space to cultivate innovative exchange among diverse researchers. Connecting researchers from disparate disciplines to better understand the complex and multiple determinants of health and health disparities can generate new knowledge to advance population health. The inaugural meeting, Building Bridges to Improve Population Health, brought together a wide array of population health experts to discuss important issues in the field. This event was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and presented in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science, the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas and the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement.

2015 Conference Links



2017 Conference Planning Committee Members

  • Dawn Alley, Director, Prevention and Population Health Group, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
  • Carolyn Cannuscio, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Pennsylvania
  • Merlin Chowkwanyun, Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
  • Dorothy Daley (co-chair), Professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration, University of Kansas
  • Justin Denney, Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Kinder Institute Urban Health Program, Rice University
  • Jennifer Beam Dowd, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London
  • Michelle Frisco (co-chair), Associate Professor of Sociology & Demography and Associate Director of the Population Research Institute, Penn State University
  • Mark Hayward, Professor of Sociology & Centennial Commission Professor in the Liberal Arts, The University of Texas - Austin
  • Lorna Thorpe, Professor of Epidemiology, Director of the Division of Epidemiology, and Vice Chair of Strategy and Planning in the Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine