John A. Rich, MD, MPH

Professor of Health Management and Policy and Co-Director of the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University

John A. Rich, MD, MPH is Professor of Health Management and Policy and Co-Director of the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University. The Center works to promote health, nonviolence and social justice through trauma informed practice, research, professional development, and advocacy for policy change. It was founded with the goal of changing the conversation about violence away from a criminal justice perspective and toward a trauma-informed public health perspective. The flagship program of the Center is Healing Hurt People, an innovative, trauma informed, hospital based intervention designed to help young victims of urban violence.

Dr. Rich’s work has focused on serving one of the nation’s most ignored and underserved populations—African-American men in urban settings. He is author of a critically acclaimed book about urban violence, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men. In 2006, Dr. Rich was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In making the award, the Foundation cited his work to design “new models of health care that stretch across the boundaries of public health, education, social service, and justice systems to engage young men in caring for themselves and their peers.” Prior to Drexel, Dr. Rich was Medical Director of the Boston Public Health Commission. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, Dr. Rich created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston HealthCREW, a program to train inner city young men to become peer health educators who focus on the health of men and boys in their communities. Dr. Rich was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2009.

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