Brian D. Smedley is Vice President and Director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC. In this position, Dr. Smedley oversees all of the operations of the Institute, which was started in 2002 with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Institute has a dual focus: to explore disparities in health and to generate policy recommendations on longstanding health equity concerns.

Formerly, Smedley was Research Director and co-founder of a communications, research and policy organization, The Opportunity Agenda, where he led the organization’s effort to center equity in state and national health reform discussions and to build the national will to expand opportunity for all. To that end, Smedley is a co-editor, along with Alan Jenkins, of a book, All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time.

Prior to helping launch The Opportunity Agenda, Smedley was a Senior Program Officer in the Division of Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), where he served as 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, among other reports on diversity in the health professions and minority health research policy.

Smedley came to the IOM from the American Psychological Association, where he worked on a wide range of social, health, and education policy topics in his capacity as Director for Public Interest Policy. Prior to working at the APA, Smedley served as a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Among his awards and distinctions, in 2004 Smedley was honored by the Rainbow/PUSH coalition as a “Health Trailblazer” award winner; in 2002 he was awarded the Congressional Black Caucus “Healthcare Hero” award; and in August, 2002, was awarded the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest by the APA. Smedley holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA.

Recent Publications

• Smedley B, Alvarez B, Panares R, Fish-Parcham C, Adland S. (2008). Identifying and Evaluating Equity Provisions in State Health Care Reform. New York: The Commonwealth Fund.
• Smedley, BD. (2008). Moving beyond access: Achieving equity in state health care reform. Health Affairs, 27:447-455.
• Smedley BD, Jenkins A., Eds. (2007). All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in Inequitable Times. New York: The New Press.
• Smedley, BD. (2007). The Diversity Benefit: How Does Diversity Among Health Professionals Address Public Needs? In RA Williams (Ed.), Eliminating Health Care Disparities in America, Towtowa, NJ: Humana Press.
• Smedley, BD. (2006). Race, poverty, and health disparities. In The State of Black America 2006: The Opportunity Compact. New York, NY: The National Urban League.
• Smedley, BD. (2006). Expanding the frame of understanding health disparities: from a focus on health systems to social and economic systems. Health Education and Behavior, 33(4):538-41.
• Institute of Medicine. (2004). In the Nations Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce. Smedley, Brian D., Stith-Butler, Adrienne Y., and Bristow, Lonnie R. (Eds.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
• Institute of Medicine. (2003). Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Smedley, Brian D., Stith, Adrienne Y., and Nelson, Alan R., (Eds.). Washington, DC: The National Academy Press.