The Next Normal: Children’s Health

Kevin B. Churchwell, MD, is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital, providing leadership, vision, and oversight for a team that’s dedicated to improving and advancing child health through their life-changing work in clinical care, research and innovation, medical education, and community engagement.

Since joining Boston Children’s as its Executive Vice President of Health Affairs Chief Operating Officer in 2013, Dr. Churchwell has been instrumental in leading the hospital’s work to become a High Reliability Organization, one where zero avoidable harm impacts any patient, family member, or employee. He has brought to Boston the same passion for enhancing the patient family experience that defined his tenure as CEO of both Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE, and Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital, part of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN.

An advocate for equity, diversity and inclusivity, Dr. Churchwell is responsible for establishing three of the 11 Offices of Health Equity and Inclusion at hospitals across the U.S. and Canada, including the Office at Boston Children’s, which he founded in 2016. With the publication of Boston Children’s own Declaration for Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity in 2020, Dr. Churchwell has committed to the work required to make Boston Children’s a community that’s made stronger by our differences, and a leader in equity for all.

A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vanderbilt Medical School in Nashville, Dr. Churchwell completed his pediatric residency and a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatric Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Churchwell is the Robert and Dana Smith Associate Professor of Anesthesia at the Harvard Medical School.

Disclosures: Dr. Churchwell is a member of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, a board member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Whitehead Institute, Advisory Board for The Boston University School of Public Health, and the Boys and Girls Club of Boston.

Rachel Garfield is Vice President at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Co-Director for its Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured. She has 20 years of experience in Medicaid policy research and is an expert in data analysis on insurance coverage and access to care for the low-income population.  She also has conducted work in public financing for behavioral health services for low-income populations. Prior to joining KFF, Dr. Garfield was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health; she has also held positions as a policy analyst in Medicaid/CHIP policy and research consultant for hospital operations and management.  Dr. Garfield has a BA from Harvard College, holds an M.H.S. in health policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and received her PhD in health policy from Harvard University.

Dr. Nancy López is professor of sociology, University of New Mexico. Dr. López co-founded/directs the Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice and she is

the founding coordinator of the New Mexico Statewide Race, Gender, Class Data Policy Consortium (Visit: race.unm.edu). Dr. López currently serves as Associate VP

for the Division of Equity & Inclusion. Her scholarship and teaching are guided by the insights of intersectionality–the simultaneity of tribal status/settler

colonialism race/structural racism, gender/heteropatriarchy, class/capitalism, ethnicity/nativism, sexuality/heterosexism as systems of oppression/resistance across

a variety of social outcomes (education, health, employment, wealth and housing) and the importance of developing contextualized community-driven solutions

that advance justice. Dr. López has been recognized for her contributions to engaged scholarship through the American Sociological Association William Foote

Whyte Distinguished Career Award for Sociological Practice and Public Sociology. Dr. López has received funding from the National Institutes of Health that resulted

in an edited volume, Mapping ”Race”: Critical Approaches for Health Disparities researchers where she talks about “pregnant while Black” and the racialized

gendered social determinants of health. She is also coined the term “street race” as a measure of race the myth or race as biology, genetic ancestry or culture and

instead focuses on race as social relationship of power that is not just about your personal identity (See conversation.com essay entitled the Census Bureau Keeps

Confusing Race and Ethnicity and publications in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and Critical Public Health Journals). Her current research funded by the WT Grant

Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation includes a mixed method study in three research practice partnerships that examines the role of ethnic studies curriculum

and culturally relevant pedagogy in reducing complex intersectional inequalities in high school (Albuquerque, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She has served on

over 75 PhD/MA committees and she given over 130 seminars on at national conferences, invited lectures and community gatherings. She a Black Latina, the New

York City-born daughter of Dominican immigrants parents who didn’t have an opportunity to go beyond a second grade education but were rich in funds of

knowledge and cultural wealth. She grew up in public housing and graduated from a de facto segregated public high school. Spanish is Dr. López’s first language; she

participated in Head Start and Upward Bound both federally funded programs designed to equity lifts for those who have historically been excluded from

educational opportunities.

Dr. Lu possesses decades of expertise in maternal and child health policy. He is currently dean of the school of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, and previously a senior associate dean at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

Lu served as director of the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau under the Obama Administration. During his tenure, he transformed key federal programs in maternal and child health, and launched major initiatives to reduce maternal, infant, and child mortality across the nation. He oversaw the launch and expansion of the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program. For his leadership, he was awarded the prestigious U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Hubert H. Humphrey Service to America Award in 2013.

Prior to his public service, Lu was a professor of obstetrics-gynecology and public health at UCLA, where his research focused on racial-ethnic disparities in birth outcomes from a life-course perspective. He co-directed the residency program in obstetrics and gynecology and a training grant in maternal and child health, and received several prestigious awards for his teaching. As a practicing obstetrician for nearly two decades, he has attended more than 1000 births, and has been voted one of the Best Doctors in America since 2005. Lu has served on three National Academy of Medicine Committees, and co-authored the recently released report  Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity.

Lu received his bachelor’s degrees in political science and human biology from Stanford University, master’s degrees in health and medical sciences and public health from UC Berkeley, medical degree from UC San Francisco, and residency training in obstetrics and gynecology from UC Irvine.

Rasheed A. Malik is the associate director of research for Early Childhood Policy at American Progress. His work focuses on child care infrastructure and supply, the economic benefits of child care, and bias and discrimination in early childhood policy. Malik’s research has been featured in or cited by The New York Times, Vox, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, CNNBusiness, and CNBC, among others.

Prior to joining American Progress, Malik was a government affairs and communications associate for the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, an organization with the goal of making the New York Harbor a shared, resilient, and accessible resource for all New Yorkers.

Malik holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in public affairs from Baruch College. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and two young children.

Terrinieka W. Powell, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Inclusion, Diversity, Anti-Racism and Equity in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). After earning her BA in Psychology from Williams College, she earned her MA and PhD from DePaul University in Community Psychology. She spent two years as a Kellogg Health Scholars Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan School of Public Health before joining the faculty JHSPH. She has expertise in adolescent health, qualitative methods, intervention development and implementation science. Her research activities, publications and funding history all demonstrate her commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable young people.

Dr. Powell leads the B Lab, a Baltimore-based research team helping to create a world where all youth are safe, healthy, hopeful and connected. Partnerships with churches, schools, libraries, families, and community-based organizations are a cornerstone of her research. She has collaborated with institutions across several states to prevent substance use and sexual risk-taking among young people. With partners, she creates interventions that are sustainable and take into account the social context of the environments. Most recently, she led the development of the Better Together (BT) intervention, an age-appropriate, culturally relevant 8-session library-based intervention designed to prevent early substance use among Black youth affected by parental drug use. Her goal is to ensure that youth, especially those affected by trauma, have multiple pathways to achieve optimal health.