partner profile

John Auerbach, MBA, became president and CEO of Trust for America’ s Health( TFAH) on January 1, 2017. His career in public health spans more than three decades, beginning in one of the earliest community health centers and progressing to positions in city, state and national government. Auerbach served as executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission for nine years, Massachusetts’ s health commissioner for six years and, for the past three years, as CDC associate director, in charge of managing the policy office and, on a temporary basis, the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support. His other work includes stints overseeing Massachusetts’ HIV / AIDS Bureau during the 1980s and 1990s and, more recently, directing the Institute on Urban Health Research and Practice at Northeastern University. Auerbach was a founding member and the second president of the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, a member of the board of directors of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the 2010-2011 president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

You have been a long-time advocate for underserved populations. What attracted you to this work?

Originally, what attracted me was simply a desire to do work that was beneficial to the community in which I lived at the time, and that was a low-income, racially diverse community like the one I grew up in. I wanted to serve the neighborhood. Even before I entered the health field, I worked in a shoe factory doing labor organizing, and I was involved in the civil rights movement before that. So I was really searching for a career that aligned with my social justice values and enabled me to earn a living.

And what have been some of your most rewarding accomplishments?

I’ ve loved working in public health at the local, state and federal levels. In each of those settings, some of my fondest memories are of working with people at the grassroots level, where there’ s an opportunity to learn what people see as their own priority health issues and to support their efforts to address those. I’ m proud of the work we did to ban smoking in Boston. We might have been the first city in our state to ban smoking in restaurants, and later we were one of the first to ban smoking in workplaces.

At the city and state levels, I was happy to work on policies related to health equity. I was able to create offices of health equity that ensured that all of our programs were paying attention to this important issue. At CDC I was involved in work to expand access to health insurance and to link healthcare to disease prevention and public health.

What do you hope to achieve at TFAH that might have been more difficult to achieve in your governmental positions?

TFAH, as an independent, nonpartisan group, is able to speak openly and frankly about the importance of public health without some of the limitations that come with a governmental chain of command. This is one of the first jobs I’ ve had in many years in which I’ m not ultimately reporting to an elected official, like the city mayor or US president.

TFAH prioritizes support for sound federal health policies. This is especially important at the current time, when there are such dramatic changes at the federal level. We’ re able to speak with an independent voice about policy proposals, whether they have to do with the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act or CDC funding. Right now, we’ re concerned about funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund— part