2024
Joseph L. Wright, MD, MPH is the newly appointed Chief Health Equity Officer and Senior Vice President for Equity Initiatives of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). He most recently served as inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer of the University of Maryland Medical System, and prior to that was tenured Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at the Howard University College of Medicine. He previously spent more than two decades in senior leadership at Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC where he provided strategic direction for the organization’s advocacy mission, public policy positions, community partnership initiatives, and launched the Child Health Advocacy Institute. He also served 17 years as the State Pediatric Medical Director within the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, currently maintains appointments as adjunct professor of emergency medicine and health policy at George Washington University, and teaches at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
Academically, Dr. Wright is among the nation’s original cohort of board-certified pediatric emergency physicians with scholarly interests that include injury prevention and the needs of underserved communities. He has contributed over 120 publications to the literature including as lead author of policy statements on The Role of Pediatricians in Youth Violence Prevention, Ensuring the Health of Children in Disasters, and Eliminating Race-Based Medicine. He was a principal investigator of the NIH-funded DC-Baltimore Research Center on Child Health Disparities, and is an elected member of both Alpha Omega Alpha and Delta Omega, the nation’s medical and public health honor societies, as well as the Academy of Medicine of Washington.
Dr. Wright has chaired the AAP Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Violence Prevention Subcommittee, Task Force on Addressing Bias and Discrimination, and Board of Director’s Committee on Equity. He has been recognized for long-standing leadership as recipient of three AAP career achievement awards for humanitarianism, and for distinguished contributions to the disciplines of injury prevention and emergency medicine, respectively. He is also recipient of the AAP’s inaugural Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Excellence Award. Additionally, he has been recognized with the Academic Pediatric Association’s George Armstrong Award, the University of Maryland’s Distinguished Terrapin Award, and the George Washington University’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award all representing the most prestigious honors bestowed by those institutions. Annual awards honoring his legacy of excellence in child health advocacy have been established in his name by both Children’s National Hospital and the AAP Section on Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Wright provides national leadership through advisory and governance service to several health and human service entities including the Association of American Medical Colleges and Safe Kids Worldwide, and he previously served as an Obama administration appointee to Food and Drug Administration’s Pediatric Advisory Committee. Dr. Wright regularly presents invited testimony before Congress, state and municipal legislative bodies, has made numerous media appearances, and lectures widely to both professional and lay audiences.
Dr. Wright earned a BA from Wesleyan University, MD from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and a Master of Public Health in Administrative Medicine and Management from George Washington University.
