2012 APHA Executive Director Citation

Jeffrey Levi, PhD, received the 2012 APHA Executive Director Citation for his exceptional, distinguished service to the Association.

Levi is executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, where he leads the organization’s advocacy efforts on behalf of a modernized public health system. He oversees the organization’s work on a range of public health policy issues such as implementation of the public health provisions of the Affordable Care Act and annual reports assessing the nation’s public health preparedness, involvement in infrastructure and response to chronic diseases.

In January 2011, President Obama appointed Levi to serve as a member of the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health, and in April 2011, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA, appointed Levi chair of the Advisory Group. Levi also is professor of health policy at George Washington University’s School of Public Health, where his research has focused on HIV/AIDS, Medicaid and integrating public health with the health care delivery system.

Before joining the Trust for America’s Health in 2005, Levi served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health and deputy director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. Beginning in the early 1980s, Levi held various leadership positions in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and HIV/AIDS communities, helping to frame the early response to the HIV epidemic. He served as the deputy director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy and as director of public policy and program development for the AIDS Action Foundation/AIDS Action Council, among other positions.

He has authored and co-authored numerous publications, covering such issues as breastfeeding and new federal prevention efforts in the Affordable Care Act, public health preparedness, insurance coverage and access to HIV testing and treatment and state and local health spending.