Richard J Jackson

Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH, is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a faculty member in the departments of Pediatrics, Urban Planning, and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. A pediatrician and public health leader, he has served as State Health Officer for California and in many other leadership positions in both the environmental health and infectious disease...See more

Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH, is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a faculty member in the departments of Pediatrics, Urban Planning, and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. A pediatrician and public health leader, he has served as State Health Officer for California and in many other leadership positions in both the environmental health and infectious disease fields. For nine years he was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health in Atlanta, for which he received the Presidential Distinguished Service award. While in California he helped establish the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program and state and national laws to reduce risks from dangerous pesticides, especially to farm workers and children. While at the CDC, he established the national asthma epidemiology and control program, oversaw the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, and instituted the current federal effort to "biomonitor" chemical levels in the U.S. population. In the late 1990s he was the CDC leader in establishing the U.S. National Pharmaceutical Stockpile to prepare for terrorism and other disasters (the stockpile was activated on September 11, 2001). He has received the Breast Cancer Fund's Hero Award, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Public Health Law Association and New Partners for Smart Growth. He received an MD from the University of California at San Francisco and an MPH from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Jackson lectures and speaks on many issues, particularly those related to the built environment and health. He has co-authored two Island Press Books: Urban Sprawl and Public Health and, more recently, Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability with Andrew L. Dannenberg and Howard Frumkin. He is the narrator of a 2011 PBS special Designing Healthy Communities. He has served on many environmental and health boards, as well as the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects. See less