Robert Wm. Blum, MD, PhD, MPH, Director
Dr. Blum is the William H. Gates, Sr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has edited two books and written over 220 journal articles, book chapters and special reports. In July 2007, Dr. Blum became the director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. He is a past president of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, has served on the American Board of Pediatrics, was a charter member of the Sub-Board of Adolescent Medicine, is a past chair of the Alan Guttmacher Institute Board of Directors and served as chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Adolescent Health and Development. In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine elected Dr. Blum into membership. He is a consultant to the World Bank and UNICEF, as well as the World Health Organization, where he has served on the Technical Advisory Group of the Child and Adolescent Health Department as well as the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group of the Human Reproductive Program. He has been awarded the Society for Adolescent Medicine’s Outstanding Achievement Award (1993). In 1998, he was the recipient of the American Public Health Association’s Herbert Needleman Award “for scientific achievement and courageous advocacy” on behalf of children and youth. Faculty Bio Philip J. Leaf, PhD, Senior Associate Director Dr. Leaf is a professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and directs the Center for Prevention of Youth Violence. He initiated the Child Deveopment-Community Policing (CD-CP) Program, a partnership bewtween the Baltimore City Police Department, Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Baltimore City's neighborhoods. This program trains community members, mental health professionals and police officers to respond to incidents of violence immediately in order to help children heal. He also works with the Maryland State Department of Education and Sheppard Pratt Health Systems to train teachers and school administrators throughout Maryland to implement more positive and supportive learning environments in schools and works with family groups to support families with youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Faculty Bio M. Chris Gibbons, MD, MPH, Associate Director
Dr. Gibbons directs the UHI Center for Community Health where he runs Community Health Worker Program which focuses on urban chronic diseases and urban maternal child health problems. Dr. Gibbons is also working to demonstrate the value of uniting health information technologies and e-health interventions among urban African-American populations. His work is forming the foundation of the emerging field of populomics which represents the fusion of the population sciences, medicine and informatics. Dr. Gibbons has been named a Health Disparities Scholar by the National Institutes of Health. Prior to coming to the Urban Health Institute, Dr. Gibbons was a Senior Policy Fellow at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Gibbons is an expert consultant to several agencies and foundations regarding health and health care disparities. Dr. Gibbons received his training in peventive medicine, general surgery, molecular genetic cancer research and earned an MPH, all at Johns Hopkins. He received his medical degree from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama. Faculty Bio Alan G. Green, PhD, Associate Director
Dr. Green is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for School Counseling in the Department of Counseling and Human Services within the School of Education. His research interests include urban school counseling, African American male issues in academics, and mental well-being. His current projects include the Urban Education Leadership Doctoral Program, the Meade Middle School Community Partnership Project, and Program Evaluation for Urban Leadership Institute. Previously, Green was the principal investigator for Project Inspiration, a federally funded urban school counseling demonstration program for the Baltimore City Public School System. Faculty Bio Amy L. Gawad, MPH, Program Director
Ms. Gawad is the program director of the Urban Health Institute. Before joining Hopkins, she was a research associate at the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academy of Sciences, where she oversaw the William T. Grant Foundation Youth Development Prize Committee. In addition, she served as the research associate on a number of reports, including Ethical Considerations for Research on Housing-Related Health Hazards Involving Children; Working Families and Growing Kids: Caring for Children and Adolescents; and Community Programs to Promote Youth Development. Prior to her work on youth development at the NAS, she had responsibility for the dissemination of Board reports, including From Neurons to Neighborhoods, a report on the science of early childhood development. She received her MPH from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Roopa Kalyanaraman, MPH; Researcher Ms. Kalyanaraman is a researcher at the Urban Health Institute, where she is a member of the Health Strategy Group for the East Baltimore school initiative. She recently received her MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she studied social and behavioral interventions for HIV prevention in urban settings. Before moving to Baltimore, she worked at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City, where she conducted research towards the development of HIV vaccines and microbicides. She has contributed to research that has been published in The Lancet, AIDS, and The Journal of Virology. Pamala Martin, Institute Administrator
Mrs. Martin oversees finance and administrative aspects of the Institute. In addition, she is administratively responsible for the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health in the Bloomberg School of Public Health where she has been for the past 3 years. Before joining Hopkins, she was an administrator for St. Agnes Healthcare where she had responsibility for both outpatient and inpatient services. She has expertise in community based federally qualified health care centers, information technology and financial as well as human resource management.
Ebony F. Pittman, Information Specialist Ms. Pittman is responsible for gathering as much information as possible on Baltimore-based Hopkins projects, as well as ensuring that our website, particularly the service finder, is as up-to-date and useful as possible. Prior to joining the UHI, Ebony worked at the Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning, where she supported a variety of projects, including their Summer Learning Day, multiple research studies, and assisted with onsite evaluations of summer programs. Before coming to Hopkins, she was a case manager for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, working primarily with children in the foster care system. | 
