Barbara Kivimae Krimgold With a broad background in health policy spanning three decades, she translates research about health into health policy frameworks and information for the media, policy community and other decision makers.   

From 1997 to 2001, she served as deputy director of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and as director of the Picker/Commonwealth Scholars in Patient-Centered Care Program at the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy in Washington DC.  She was also co-director, with James Auerbach of the National Policy Association, of a project on Income Inequality, Socioeconomic Status and Health, which resulted in a major conference, a series of panels and briefings, and a monograph, two videos and a book that have been widely distributed.    

For over ten years, she served as a health policy professional within the federal government: as a management intern within the then-Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, as a budget examiner and senior budget examiner within the Office of Management and Budget – serving under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan – and finally as the top health policy professional for the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.  She has worked with non-profits and foundations. 

She is the co-editor of Income, Socioeconomic Status and Health: Exploring the Relationships and The American Woman 1996-97:  Women and Work and the co-author of Improving Health:  It Doesn’t Take a Revolution and Incorporating Socioeconomic Factors into U.S. Health Policy:  Addressing the Barriers.  

She has made dozens of presentations on health disparities by race and class and on health policy implications of health disparities research.  She has actively mentored health policy scholars from many countries and is part of an active international network of scholars and policy experts.  She has served as faculty or fellow in symposia in Canada, the U.K., Norway, Mexico, and Australia.  She is a founding member of the website www.inequality.org, which serves as a resource for journalists and advocates, and is on the advisory board of Corporate Voices for Working Families and the UCSF Center for Social Inequalities in Health.  She

has served as a consultant to the Pan American Health Organization/WHO and serves as Secretary of the Board of the International Society for Equity in Health. 

She graduated from Harvard College and won a National Defense Education Act Fellowship to study at Harvard’s Graduate Center for Middle Eastern Studies.  She has worked and studied in a number of countries, including France, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Ghana.  She lives with her family in McLean, Virginia.