Dr. Thomas LaVeist
Dr. Thomas LaVeist, Ph.D.Executive Producer/Writer
Thomas A. LaVeist, Ph.D. was appointed Dean of the Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, LA in 2018. He was previously Chairman of the Department of Health Policy & Management at the George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health between 2016-2018. He joined GWU after 25 years on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health where he was the William C. & Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy and Director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, his doctorate degree in medical sociology from the University of Michigan and postdoctoral fellowship in public health at the Michigan School of Public Health.
Dr. LaVeist has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals including Health Affairs, Journal of General Internal Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Sociology, Milbank Quarterly, Medical Care, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Ethnicity and Disease, Health Services Research, and Social Science & Medicine. He is a highly sought after lecturer at leading universities, corporations, professional conferences and workshops. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Center for Disease Control, Department of Defense, Commonwealth Fund, Sage Foundation and the Agency for Healthcare Research.
Dr. LaVeist has provided consultation services for numerous federal agencies and healthcare organizations on minority health and cultural competency issues and racial disparities in health. His dissertation on racial disparities in infant mortality was awarded the 1989 Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award by the American Sociological Association. He is the recipient of the “Innovation Award” from the National Institutes of Health, and the “Knowledge Award” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health.
In addition to his scholarly writing, Dr. LaVeist has written articles for Newsweek Magazine, Black Enterprise Magazine, and the Baltimore Sun. The second edition of his edited volume, Race, Ethnicity and Health: A Public Health Reader (Jossey-Bass Publishers) was published fall 2012. His textbook, Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Race, Ethnicity and Health in the United States, (Jossey-Bass) was published in 2005. He is also the author of The DayStar Guide to Colleges for African American Students (Stanly Kapkin/Simon and Schuster), and co-author of “8 Steps to Help Black Families Pay for College (Princeton Review/Random House). His most recent book project, Legacy of the Crossing: Life, Death, and Triumph among Descendants of the World’s Largest Forced Migration published in 2017.
