About

I am a scholar of public health and health policy (View and Download my CV). I am an associate professor in the Hudson College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma. I also serve as president of the Oklahoma Public Health Association (OPHA) and as co-director of the Center for Health Outcomes, Research, and Policy at the Hudson College.

My current book project, “Governing Health,” examines the fracturing of US public health systems in the modern era and challenge of building institutions capable of confronting both chronic disease and acute threats.

My work has been published in outlets including the American Journal of Public Health, Policy History, JAMA, Studies in American Political Development, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Core areas of interest include the development of public health systems, agenda-setting in presidential administrations, policy implementation, global HIV/AIDS policy, and the role of non-state service providers in supplementing state capacity during public health emergencies and disasters. I am involved in the ongoing Global Oral History of PEPFAR project and am also actively engaged in public health workforce training within Oklahoma and as part of the Region 6 Public Health Training Center and the Region 6 Center for Health Security and Response.

My article “Linking Public Health and Individual Medicine” received the Paper of the Year Award from the American Public Health Association and the American Journal of Public Health. My article “Eliminating Malaria in the American South,” with George Mohler, was featured in the American Public Health Association’s book Public Health Then and Now: Landmark Papers from AJPH.

My book, Health Divided: Public Health and Individual Medicine in the Making of the Modern American State, offers a reinterpretation of the foundations of modern American health policy, focusing on the divergence between policy regimes dealing with public health and with individual medical care. The book explores how public health policies have shaped health outcomes as well as the ways in which policy changes have fed back into the health care system and reshaped policy priorities. It highlights the role of entrepreneurial bureaucrats in building new programs, generating support for them, and constructing new networks of intergovernmental relations.

My research on malaria was featured in a piece on NPR’s Morning Edition.