FAIR Health Expands Academic Advisory Board

October 15, 2020

With the addition of three new members, FAIR Health’s Academic Advisory Board has been expanded to a body of six. Its charge is being expanded too, with an increased emphasis on vulnerable populations and healthcare disparities.

Created to enhance FAIR Health’s mission to contribute to public knowledge, the Academic Advisory Board has always represented diverse areas of the healthcare research community. Its purpose remains to advance the research potential of our data, which support the work of academics, policy makers and clinical researchers and form the basis of our own widely disseminated studies. Additionally, FAIR Health is interested in advancing research that explores profiles in underserved communities and disparities in healthcare quality and outcomes—areas meriting heightened attention, as highlighted in the recent national conversation on healthcare inequities. Given the academic focus of the new members—Gilbert Gonzales, MHA, PhD; Chima Ndumele, MPH, PhD; and Arrianna Marie Planey, MA, PhD—they are well positioned to help shape the direction of FAIR Health’s research program.

Dr. Gonzales is an assistant professor at the Department of Medicine, Health and Society; the Program for Public Policy Studies; and the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Gonzales earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Biology from Baylor University, a Master of Health Administration degree from the University of North Texas Health Science Center and a PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Dr. Ndumele is an associate professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health and a faculty associate at the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. He is also the co-director of the Yale Medicaid Policy Lab, which conducts work funded by the National Institutes of Health and several foundations. Dr. Ndumele received his PhD from the Brown University School of Public Health.

Dr. Planey is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and a fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. Dr. Planey received a bachelor’s degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley; a master’s degree in Social Sciences (concentration: Political Science) from the University of Chicago; and a PhD in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The new members join the three founding members of the Advisory Board, who are continuing in that role. They are Helen Levy, PhD, a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, Ford School of Public Policy and School of Public Health; J. Michael McWilliams, MD, PhD, the Warren Alpert Foundation Professor of Health Care Policy and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Rachel Werner, MD, PhD, the Robert D. Eilers Professor of Health Care Management at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd commented: “FAIR Health welcomes the new members to our Academic Advisory Board. As distinguished researchers in diverse fields, they will help expand the scope of FAIR Health’s research efforts.”