Rethinking Health Care Delivery

John A. Rich ’80

John A. Rich, MD, MPH is Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel Dornsife University School of Public Health. He is also the Co-Director of the Drexel Center for Nonviolence and Justice, a multidisciplinary effort to address violence and trauma to improve physical and mental health. Dr. Rich’s work has focused on issues of urban violence and trauma, health disparities, particularly as they affect the health of men of color. Dr. Rich is also an expert in qualitative research methods and narrative analysis. In 2006, Dr. Rich was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. In awarding this distinction, the Foundation cited his work to design “new models of health care that stretch across the boundaries of public health, education, social service, and justice systems to engage young men in caring for themselves and their peers.”

Prior to joining Drexel University, Dr. Rich served as the Medical Director of the Boston Public Health Commission where he led the city’s initiatives on Men’s Health, Cancer, Cardiovascular Health, and Health Disparities. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, he created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston HealthCREW, a program to train inner-city young men as peer health educators. His book about urban violence titled Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) shares stories of trauma and healing.

Dr. Rich earned his A.B. degree in English from Dartmouth College, his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine, and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internship and residency in primary care internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a fellowship in general internal medicine at the Harvard Medical School. In 2009, Dr. Rich was elected to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He currently serves on several boards including the Philadelphia Board of Health, and the Trust for America’s Health. He served on the Board of Trustees for Dartmouth College from 2008-2016.

Amber E. Barnato

Amber E. Barnato, MD, MPH, MS is the John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. The Dartmouth Institute is both an academic department and a cross-campus institute bringing together more than 150 faculty who serve the mission of improving health and health care by conducting research jointly with talented staff and academic, health system, and community partners and by teaching and learning from more than 200 graduate students annually in the department’s MS, MPH, MHCDS, and PhD programs. Dr. Barnato is trained in two medical specialties, public health/preventive medicine and hospice/palliative medicine.  Her own research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of variation in end-of-life intensive care unit (ICU) and life-sustaining treatment use among seriously ill older adults. She focuses on the interplay between organizational norms, provider-patient communication, and implicit cognition, and how these phenomena produce racial disparities in end-of-life treatment. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Barnato also collects and shares stories from family members regarding their experiences making life support decisions for patients in the ICU at her website www.ICUStoryWeb.org.