SUSAN L. PARISH, PHD, MSW

“Beginning in college, I worked as a direct care worker, and later administrator for nine years in residential and family support programs for people with intellectual disabilities. I started as a direct care worker. I am fundamentally driven by a feminist worldview, and believe every person should have robust quality of life, and the chance to achieve their potential, regardless of their disability, gender, or racial identity. My work has been shaped by this worldview, and the empirical evidence that Americans with disabilities and their family caregivers contend with an utterly inadequate and unfair social safety net. My research aims to improve the disability, health, and social welfare policies that make living in the US with disabilities expensive, unhealthy, and stigmatizing.”

Susan L. Parish, PhD, MSW is dean of the College of Health Professions, and professor of Health Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to joining VCU in 2019, she served as Dean of Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. She was also the inaugural Nancy Lurie Marks Professor of Disability Policy, and directed the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy at

Brandeis University. She began her academic career as an assistant professor of social work at UNC- Chapel Hill. Her research examines the health and financial well-being of women and children with disabilities and their caregiving families.

Dr. Parish has garnered more than $12 million in external research funding from a range of federal, state, and foundation sources. She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed journal articles, and is a fellow of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, the Society for Social Work and Research. She received numerous teaching and mentoring awards as a faculty member at UNC and Brandeis. Her research has been recognized with national awards from the Arc of the United States, the American Public Health Association, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. She is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Dr. Parish earned her BA in English Literature and MSW from Rutgers University. She earned her PhD in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and completed and National Institutes of Health-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A STRONGER SYSTEM: "I believe every person should have robust quality of life and the chance to achieve their potential."

I. LESLIE RUBIN, MD

"Every day, each one of us conducts our lives with physical, emotional, and social abilities fulfilling our needs while participating and contributing to society. Every day, we are reminded of our own vulnerability and the vulnerability of others who do not have access to the same resources. Every day, we are reminded that we are all part of a larger society, and for all of us to enjoy the benefits and bounty of society, we must work together to ensure that all our fellow men, women and children have opportunities to live healthy and full lives. Transferring these thoughts into action is the essence of advocacy."

I. Leslie Rubin MD is Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine; Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine; Co-director of the Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Unit at Emory University; President and Founder or Break the Cycle of Health Disparities, Inc.; and Medical Director of The Rubin Center for Autism and Developmental Pediatrics, in Atlanta, GA.

Dr. Rubin is originally from South Africa, where he trained in Pediatrics and arrived in the USA in 1976. He was initially at the Hospitals of the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio. In 1980, he

moved to The Children’s Hospital in Boston and the Harvard Medical School where he spent 14 years. In 1994, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia as Director of Developmental Pediatrics at Emory University and Medical Director of the Marcus Center. Since 1998 he has been involved with the Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) at Emory. In 2004, he joined the Department of Pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine. He has been involved in the healthcare of children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities since 1977. In 1989, he and Allen Crocker published the first textbook on medical care for children and adults with developmental disabilities and in 2006 they published the 2nd edition. Allen Crocker passed away in 2011, but with other partners Dr Rubin published the 3rd edition: Health Care for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Across the Lifespan, Springer 2016.

He currently directs interdisciplinary clinical programs for children with autism, cerebral palsy, and other developmental disabilities at Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital and at

Developmental Pediatric Specialists in Sandy Springs, GA. He has a faculty appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine, and teaches Medical Students and Pediatrics Residents, as well as Pediatric Residents from Emory University Department of Pediatrics. He also provides consultation and clinical services to the Hall County Children’s Medical Services on a regular basis, serving many families who are immigrants from Mexico. He is a pediatric consultant to the Emory Neuro-development Exposure Clinic, which evaluates children who had been exposed to alcohol, drugs and other substances in utero, and who have developmental and behavioral disorders, living in foster or adoptive homes.

He is the recipient of the Robert E. Cooke Lifetime Achievement Award from the AADMD in 2015; the Autism Achievement Award from the Annual Conference and Exposition of Georgia, in 2016; a Children's Environmental Health Hero recognition, by Region 4 EPA; the Children's Environmental Health Excellence Award from the Office of Children's Health Protection, US EPA for Break the Cycle; and the AAP F. Edwards Rushton CATCH Award in 2018.

DAILY REMINDER: "We must work together to ensure that all our fellow men, women and children have opportunities to live healthy and full lives."