Kenneth Smith, PhD, Lead Program Analyst, Chronic Disease & Environmental Health for the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he studied population and health economics. He has over 10 years of experience as a researcher, with expertise in health care financing, applied econometric methods, program evaluation and design, and the health professional workforce. More recently, he was the Director of the Division of Chronic Disease Prevention for the Philadelphia Public Health Department, where he helped facilitate policy, systems, and environmental change to improve access to healthy, affordable food and safe spaces for physical activity and play. As Lead Senior Program Analyst for NACCHO, Dr. Smith provides technical assistance to members on land-use and transportation planning and chronic disease prevention and management. He provides technical assistance to local health departments nation-wide, including the Big Cities Chronic Disease Community of Practice for Chronic Disease Prevention. Through one-on-one consultations, on-site and webinar trainings, facilitated peer-to-peer mentorship and policy brief development, Dr. Smith helps local health departments across the country build healthier communities. He directs projects on health impact assessment, health in all policies, and childhood obesity prevention.

Kate Rube, Transportation Program Manager, Project for Public Spaces. Ms. Rube is an urban planner with expertise in smart growth, active living, and transportation issues. She has led many efforts to build coalitions across different sectors, organize workgroups and training programs, and provide technical assistance to local organizations and governments in order to advance sustainable community goals. Previously, she worked as the Active Design National Training Manager for New York City’s inter-agency Active Design program, where she developed and ran a peer mentoring and training program for municipalities across the country on how to design communities and streets that encourage walking, bicycling, and other physical activity. In this role, she organized trainings and workshops for more than 1,200 people. She provided resources and technical assistance on a range of active living issues, including fostering inter-agency partnerships, building political support, and policy opportunities. Ms. Rube served as the Director of Government Affairs & Outreach for Smart Growth America from 2007-2010, where she organized a coalition of more than 60 national, state, and local organizations. She led policy development and advocacy on sustainable communities, housing, transportation, and environmental issues. During her time at Smart Growth America, Kate helped develop and build support for performance-based transportation planning policy, as well as legislation integrating climate change goals in transportation policy. She helped to organize development of the Transportation for America campaign, a broad national coalition for federal transportation reform. Kate formerly worked for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group as the Assistance National Field Director, where she coordinated the organization’s strategy to build political, public and stakeholder support on a range of federal environmental issues.

Amelia Greiner, PhD, MS, Assistant Professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers. Dr. Amelia Greiner’s research interests include the use of Health Impact Assessments and a Health in All Policies framework to inform policy and decision making in non-health sectors. Dr. Greiner's particular area of interest is the opportunities and challenges for developing health-promoting land use policy, particularly zoning policy. In addition to her land use work, she studies the presentation of risk and health information in the news media for issues that involve a complex interplay of environmental, social and economic concerns. She teaches an undergraduate course in Epidemiology and Health and Public Policy, and masters and doctoral courses in Qualitative Research Methods and Bridging Public Health and Urban Planning. From 2008-2012, Dr. Greiner served as a as the co-chair of the Education, Arts & Community Technical Advisory Committee for the STAR Community Index, a national framework and performance-management system that will allow local governments to measure and rate their sustainability performance. She earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and an MS in Communication at Cornell University.

Margaret Round is a Senior Environmental Analyst in the Massachusetts Department of Public Health/Bureau of Environmental Health’s (MDPH/BEH) Environmental Toxicology Program (ETP). The ETP evaluates acute and chronic health impacts associated with chemical contaminants that may be present in a variety of environmental media including air, water, soil, fish, and some consumer products. She has more than 20 years of experience working on potential public health impacts and related regulatory issues associated with exposure to air pollutants including air toxics. Since 2004, Ms. Round has been the project manager of a large-scale MDPH health study of Logan Airport in Boston. She is also working with Massachusetts Department of Transportation to pilot a health impact assessment of a transportation planning study in Somerville, Massachusetts. She is actively involved in the bureau’s implementation of an environmental health surveillance network and on a project that is evaluating local public health capacity to reduce health impacts of climate change in Massachusetts. Prior to working at MDPH/BEH, Ms. Round worked for 15 years at Northeast States Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) on implementation of state and national air toxic regulations. During this period, Ms. Round was responsible for a study that led to a bi-national framework involving the Northeast states and Eastern Canadian Provinces for reducing mercury emissions. Ms. Round has a Bachelor of Science degree in Toxicology from Northeastern University.

Leslie Meehan is the Director of Healthy Communities for the Nashville Area MPO. She specializes in active transportation policy, planning and education with a focus on the relationship between the built environment, transportation and health. Leslie is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Institute of Transportation Engineers. She works closely with the public health community and serves on the Advisory Committee for the Tennessee Obesity Taskforce.

Anna Ricklin, Manager, Planning and Community Health Research Center, American Planning Association. Ms. Ricklin has managed APA’s Planning and Community Health Research Center since December 2011. Prior to that, she worked on transit planning and bike projects with the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. She first became aware of the importance of the built environment to healthy living choices when she had a job promoting public transit, walking, and biking in Portland, Oregon, where she lived before attending the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and earning a Master's of Health Sciences.

Fatimah Williams Castro, PhD, Program Manager, New Jersey Partnership for Healthy Kids-New Brunswick, New Brunswick Tomorrow. Dr. Fatimah Williams Castro joined the New Jersey Partnership for Healthy Kids–New Brunswick, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation aimed at reducing childhood obesity, in June 2011. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Rutgers University. She has contributed to health research with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and has published extensively for her research on social movements, policy, and urban studies. She spent a number of years in Honduras, Central America where she taught English at an orphanage and in Colombia, South America while working on her dissertation. She is fluent in both English and Spanish languages. She serves on the Operations Committee of the New Brunswick Community Food Alliance, a local food policy council.

CDR Arthur M. Wendel, MD, MPH is Team Lead of the Healthy Community Design Initiative, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He has worked in a variety of areas of public health, including disaster response, food-borne illness, and environmental health. He received his BA from Pomona College and his MD and MPH from Tufts University. He completed his family practice training at the University of Washington and preventive medicine training at CDC, and he is a graduate of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. CDR Wendel has become a national voice for the incorporation of health in transportation, zoning, and community planning policy decisions. Healthy and safe community environments require that transportation systems provide safe and convenient access for all users; zoning separates people from harmful exposures while providing access to destinations, and, through community planning, growth and development patterns facilitate healthy living. CDR Wendel has built a unique national program, using HIA to achieve health-promoting policy changes and bringing in new partners in transportation, parks, and planning to improve the nation’s health.

Peri L. Nearon, MPA, Director, Office of Nutrition & Fitness, Division of Family Health Services New Jersey Department of Health. Ms. Nearon is the first Director of New Jersey’s Office of Nutrition & Fitness at the state health department. The office was established in 2007, and charged with addressing the obesity epidemic and promoting healthy communities through improved nutrition and increased opportunities for physical activity throughout the State. Ms. Nearon’s state service began in the Department of Human Services in 1986, and has included planning, policy and program implementation for children, adolescent, elderly and disabled populations. In 1996 she joined the Department of Health as the Administrator of the Statewide Respite Care Program, and was later appointed as the first Director of the Office on Women’s Health, where she served for five years leading and coordinating women’s health services for the State of New Jersey. Ms. Nearon has an undergraduate degree in psychology with a minor in women’s studies, a graduate degree in public administration and nearly 30 years of experience with state government.

Keshia Pollack, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Consultant, Health Impact Project. Dr. Pollack’s primary research objective is to create safe and healthy environments where people live, work, play and during travel. She contributes to this area using injury epidemiology, health policy, health impact assessments, and public health practice. In her research, Dr. Pollack uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to identify risk factors for, and strategies to prevent, injuries related to occupation, obesity, sports and recreation, physical activity, and the built environment. Her interests include understanding how these issues impact vulnerable populations of all ages and the elimination of health disparities in these previously described areas. Ultimately, she aspires to translate the findings from her research to decision-makers to assist with formulating pragmatic prevention policies. To support this aspiration, through her commitment to public health practice, Dr. Pollack has served for five years, and will continue to serve, as a health policy advisor for an elected official in the Maryland House of Delegates. She is also engaging with policymakers at the state and federal levels to maximize the application of health impact assessments for the policymaking process.