Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS is Associate Dean for Health Equity Research; C.N.H Long Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Management; and Director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale. Her research focuses on health and healthcare equity for marginalized populations with an emphasis on the social and structural drivers of health, the influence of healthcare systems on health disparities, and the advancement of community-academic partnered scholarship. Dr. Nunez-Smith served as Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response and Chair of the Presidential COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, co-chair of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board and chair of the governor’s ReOpen CT Advisory Group Community Committee. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, she attended Jefferson Medical College, residency at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and fellowship at the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program.

Megan V. Smith, DrPH, MPH  is a national leader in public health, maternal and child health, and mental health with specific interest and expertise related to families experiencing poverty.  Dr. Smith has broad knowledge and extensive experience in transforming systems to reduce health inequities for birthing people with a particular focus on economic inequities.   Dr. Smith serves as a consultant to the National Diaper Bank Network.  In this work she plays a leading role in shaping and implementing research and policies related to childhood poverty in the United States.  Most recently, she served as Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and in the Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine, and Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Yale School of Public Health and currently serves as Senior Director of Community Health Transformation at the Connecticut Hospital Association.  Dr. Smith is the founder of the Mental Health Outreach for MotherS (MOMS) partnership, a nationally acclaimed approach to improving mental health among low wealth families.  MOMS is currently being implemented in multiple states across the U.S. Dr. Smith also founded and directed the Elevate Policy Lab, a policy center at Yale School of Medicine whose primary aim is to provide technical assistance to government entities on the advancement of mental health and family economic mobility

Clara Blustein Lindholm serves as the Director of Research Interpretation for the Culture Change Project at the FrameWorks Institute. She was previously a Principal Strategist at FrameWorks, specializing in helping organizations to communicate about the criminal legal system, juvenile justice, and behavioral health. Clara has been interested in the intersection of research and advocacy since she was an intern at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, where she conducted research on restorative justice programs for youth and indigent defense delivery systems. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in East Asian languages and civilizations, focusing on comparative legal histories of China and the United States.

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