Dr. Stephen W. Patrick Joins Rollins as HPM Chair
The Rollins School of Public Health is pleased to announce that Stephen W. Patrick, MD, has been selected as chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management after a competitive national search. Patrick will join Rollins June 1.
About Dr. Patrick
Patrick joins Rollins from Vanderbilt University where he serves as professor of pediatrics and health policy, William R. Long Director of Child Health Policy at the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy, and as an attending neonatologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is also executive director of Firefly, a program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center seeking to improve health for pregnant and postpartum people with opioid use disorders and their infants covered by Medicaid.
He previously served as senior policy advisor to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy where he led an interagency policy process that resulted in the administration’s action plan to improve outcomes for pregnant people with substance use disorder and their infants. He has been a voting member on several U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory boards focused on opioid use in children. He has testified about the impact of the opioid crisis on pregnant people and infants before committees in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Patrick’s awards include the American Medical Association Foundation Excellence in Medicine Leadership Award, the Nemours Child Health Services Research Award, the Society for Pediatric Research Young Investigator Award, and the Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in a number of leading scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Pediatrics, and Health Affairs.
The department was previously chaired by Ken Thorpe, PhD, who led the department for 22 years and established its reputation as an exceptional place to learn and work in health policy and management. Joe Lipscomb, PhD, has served as interim chair since August 2023 and will continue to do so until Patrick’s arrival, at which point, he will return to the faculty.
