I am a medical anthropologist who has conducted original research in African American communities in the U.S. and Caribbean, as well as working on social and health policy issues throughout my professional career. I am the President and CEO of Grantmakers In Health, the professional association for health philanthropy. We work with hundreds of health funders to support and inform their work. In the past year I published an article with Kathy Sessions on "Philanthropy and Disparities: Progress, Challenges, and Unfinished Business" (Health Affairs 30 (10): 2017-2022) and an article in the Journal of the Lancaster County (PA) Historical Society on "Growing Up Free and Black in Mid-Nineteenth Century Lancaster County" (Summer/Fall 2011). My book, Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies, was the first to fully document and preserve the use of traditional medicines in the Sea Islands. In addition to Hoodoo Medicine, I co-edited several authoritative reports through the National Academies Press (National Academy of Sciences). These include: Examining the Health Disparities Research Plan of the National Institutes of Health: Unfinished Business; Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future; Hispanics and the Future of America; Terrorism: Perspectives from the Behavioral and Social Sciences; Discouraging Terrorism: Some Implications of 9/11; America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, vols. 1 and 2; Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan America; Measuring Housing Discrimination in A National Study; and Premature Death in the New Independent States.I have a doctorate in Medical Anthropology from the UC Berkeley-UC San Francisco joint program. My dissertation research, which sparked my interest in policy, was on health care (from "bush medicine" to the best doctors) in Jamaica.