Joe W. Thompson
Center Director

Director, Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI)
Surgeon General for the State of Arkansas
Associate Professor in the Colleges of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Practicing General Pediatrician at Arkansas Children’s Hospital

Drawing on years of expertise in using scientific evidence to inform health policy, Dr. Joe Thompson directs and oversees all of the center’s activities. He provides leadership in devising the center’s policy, engagement and other strategies and serves as the center’s key spokesperson.

In addition to his leadership role for the center, Dr. Thompson is responsible for developing health policy, research activities and collaborative programs that promote better health and health care in Arkansas. This has included vanguard efforts in planning and implementing health care financing reform, and tobacco- and obesity-related health-promotion and disease-prevention programs. He was the lead architect of the Tobacco Settlement Act of 2000, has been at the forefront of Arkansas’s efforts to prevent childhood obesity and instituted the Arkansas Health Insurance Roundtable. Under Dr. Thompson’s watch, ACHI helped pass the Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006, documented the state’s success in halting progress of the childhood obesity epidemic and helped implement ARHealthNetworks, Arkansas’s health care benefits waiver for low-income workers.

Dr. Thompson serves on the Arkansas Board of Health and is past president of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Nationally, Dr. Thompson serves on the board of Academy Health and on the Health Care Financing and Organization National Advisory Panel. He has authored many articles and publications.

Dr. Thompson earned his medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and Master of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Luther Terry Fellow in Preventive Medicine advising the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health in Washington, D.C., and the assistant vice president and director of research at the National Committee for Quality Assurance in Washington, D.C.

Angela Glover Blackwell
Principal Advisor to the Center Director

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, PolicyLink

Angela Glover Blackwell is the principal advisor to Dr. Joe Thompson, helping to provide overall leadership for the center and serving as one of its spokespersons.

Ms. Blackwell founded PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity, in 1999. A renowned community-building activist and a national authority on poverty issues, Blackwell previously served as senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1995 to 1998. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (Calif.) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. From 1977 to 1987, Blackwell was a partner at Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm. She is the co-author of Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), and contributed to Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007), an anthology edited by John Edwards. Blackwell earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She serves on numerous boards and co-chairs a task force on poverty for the Center for American Progress. 

In 2007, PolicyLink launched the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place, which brought the organization’s extensive work on access to healthy foods and physical activity under one umbrella. PolicyLink is nationally known for its work promoting equity and ensuring that the needs of low-income communities and communities of color are always considered as decisions are made in areas of health, housing and workforce development. In addition to working with the RWJF Center, PolicyLink is also project director for the Healthy Eating, Active Living Convergence Partnership, a consortium of six major health funders seeking to ensure that opportunities for healthy eating and physical activity exist in all communities.
 

Mildred Thompson
Deputy Director

PolicyLink Director of the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place

Mildred Thompson provides day-to-day direction and management for the center. Drawing from her extensive knowledge and experience on the impact of place on health and in advancing policies and strategies to create healthy environments that support healthy eating and active living, Thompson is well positioned to assist in providing oversight in operations of the center.

She also leads the work of the PolicyLink health team, participates in research focused on understanding community factors that impact health disparities, and identifies practice and policy changes needed to improve individual, family and community health. She has authored several reports and journal articles focused on reducing health disparities, increasing awareness about social determinants of health and effective ways to impact policy change. Prior to joining PolicyLink, she was director of Community Health Services for the Alameda County Public Health Department; director in Oakland for Healthy Start, a federal infant mortality reduction program; and director of San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center. Thompson has degrees in nursing and psychology and a graduate degree in social work from New York University. She has also taught at Mills College and San Francisco State University and has worked as an organizational development consultant. Thompson speaks frequently on health and place issues and serves on several boards and commissions, including the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the Institute of Medicine’s Health Disparities Roundtable.

Paula Card-Higginson
Deputy Director

Associate Director, Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI)

As deputy director, Paula Card-Higginson oversees all operation and program activities for the RWJF Center. She oversees the center’s efforts to synthesize the latest research, develop policy recommendations, and engage and coordinate with other RWJF-funded programs. Ms. Card-Higginson has a unique background that combines analytical skills with science writing and editing experience and grant review and development. After earning her Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Hendrix College, she began a career in science and biomedical writing and editing. She has more than 17 years of experience in disseminating information to broad audiences, including federal and private funding agencies, peer-reviewed biomedical literature, the pharmaceutical industry, and public and private health policy stakeholders. She is a founding member of ACHI, where she works as an associate director. She currently oversees ACHI’s health data initiative and analytic teams to ensure coordination across projects and collaborators and translates data into results that inform health policy in the state. Before joining ACHI full time, she served as director of the Office of Grants and Scientific Publications at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). Her past experience also includes editing and writing for the book, scientific journal and pharmaceutical publishing industries.

Carole Garner
Team Leader, Engagement and Coordination  

Carole Garner has worked within many arenas in the field of public health and nutrition, from direct client services and program consultation to state program direction and academia. Her primary responsibilities at the center include coordinating with other RWJF-funded programs to share best practices and working to increase leadership capacity within the national movement to reverse childhood obesity. Prior to joining the center, she served as director of Nutrition Services at the Arkansas Department of Health. Garner later joined the UAMS College of Public Health as an assistant professor, where she received the Faculty Award for Excellence in Public Service.

Ms. Garner has served as president of the Association of State and Territorial Public Health Nutrition Directors, and on the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association (APHA). She is currently on the Steering Committee of the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity and the Food and Nutrition Section Council of APHA. She is vice chair of the Arkansas Child Health Advisory Committee, public policy coordinator of the Arkansas Dietetic Association and co-chair of Arkansas Action for Healthy Kids.

Ms. Garner earned her Master of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley and her undergraduate degree in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She has been recognized with several national leadership awards.

Melanie Tervalon
Associate Director, RWJF Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Melanie Tervalon, associate director, supports the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and PolicyLink partnership to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015, and works on multiple health and place initiatives for the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place. With over 30 years of experience, Tervalon brings a wide range of expertise. Her previous experience includes crafting strategic plans for program and funding initiatives; providing expert knowledge in the field of culture, race, ethnicity, and identity in health and health services; guiding leaders or teams from ideas to implementation while modeling participatory processes; and synthesizing large amounts of often disparate information for use in organizational planning or redirection. Tervalon received an M.D. from the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF), an M.P.H. from the University of California–Berkeley, completed a health policy fellowship at UCSF, and is a board certified pediatrician.

Kathryn Hazelett
Team Leader, Policy

As policy team lead, Kathryn Hazelett works with the RWJF Center’s partners to create and implement the center’s policy strategy at the local, state, and federal levels. Kathryn’s policy background began with fiscal and tax work at the grassroots and state legislative level tackling issues such as payday lending, the streamlined sales and use tax agreement, and raising the minimum wage. Her experience broadened into developing and implementing policies at the executive branch level as the director of Policy for Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe. She chaired the governor’s workforce cabinet, aided in the drafting of the executive recommendation for the state budget, and worked on issues such as full-funding for quality pre-k for at-risk children, paid leave for state employees to volunteer in their children’s schools, an increase in the state’s tobacco tax to fund much-needed health programs, and the implementation of a “green” executive order asking all state agencies to conserve energy and recycle. She has written for newspapers, nonprofit publications, and a variety of policymakers helping to make complex issues understandable. Kathryn has B.A. degrees from Northwestern University and Purdue University, a J.D. from the University of Texas, School of Law, and an LL.M. in Taxation from the New York University School of Law.

Erica Pelletreau
Team Leader, Communications

Erica Pelletreau leads the RWJF Center’s communications initiatives to reverse the epidemic by 2015. In this capacity, she develops, implements, and coordinates all public aspects of the campaign. Pelletreau has nearly 15 years of professional communications experience both domestically and abroad through which she has honed the full range of strategic and crisis communications skills. She has worked with a wide variety of nonprofit organizations and is committed to using communications in order to advance a just and equitable society. Pelletreau has an M.A. in Political Science from the New School for Social Research in New York and a B.A. in International Affairs from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She serves on the steering committee of Progressive PR Professionals.
 

Genevieve Polk
Team Leader, Technical Assistance

As technical assistance team lead, Genevieve Polk focuses on providing leadership and capacity building to grassroots and community-based organizations interested in using policy to improve the communities and schools where children live, learn, and play. Prior to joining the RWJF Center, she worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention providing technical assistance to select states and worked on various nutrition and physical activity projects including the release of federal physical activity guidelines in October 2008. She has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Modern European History from Bowdoin College and a master’s in Public Health from Emory University. 

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