Welcome to the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy

Established in 2004, the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy is named in honor of Drs. H. Jack Geiger and Count Gibson, pioneers in community health practice and tireless advocates for civil and human rights. Nearly 40 years ago, Geiger and Gibson founded the nation's first community health centers in Mound Bayou, Mississippi and Boston, Massachusetts; today, over 1200 health centers serve more than 17 million persons in 7000 urban and rural medically underserved communities across the nation.

Through education and training and research and scholarship into community health centers and the patients and populations they serve, the Geiger Gibson Program shares the core mission of the community health centers program: to eliminate medical underservice and disparities in population health and health care and improve health and health care for all persons. The Program was founded with generous gifts from the National Association of Community Health Centers and health centers and primary care associations around the nation. Today the program is supported through many sources: continuing gifts from health centers and state and regional primary care associations representing health centers throughout the nation, government research funding; grants from leading foundations such as the Henry J, Kaiser Family Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, and the United Health Foundation; and a major ongoing gift from the RCHN Community Health Foundation, which supports the work of the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative.

The Geiger Gibson Program is home to the following activities:

• Masters and doctoral-level coursework, training, and graduate student research assistantships in policy issues and research methods related to the measurement and remediation of medical underservice and health disparities and the advancement of equal justice in health and health care
• A rich research agenda and an ongoing policy brief series from the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative on critical health policy issues affecting health centers and medically underserved populations and civil rights policy and practices;
• A Distinguished Visitorship program for leading figures in the health center movement
• Advanced policy training for health center and PCA staff in collaboration with the National Association of Community Health Centers and state and regional primary care associations
• The annual Geiger Gibson Symposium in Health Policy
• In collaboration with GW's Department of Health Services Management and Leadership, the establishment of the first masters in health services administration degree for health center management
• In collaboration with the RCHN Community Health Foundation, development of the CHroniCles Project, a special interactive website that tells the story of health centers and the communities they serve.

Faculty

• Peter Shin, PhD, MPH
      Associate Research Professor and GG/RCHN Director
• Emily Jones, MPP, PhD candidate
      GG/RCHN Associate Director
• Sara Rosenbaum, JD
     Chair, Department of Health Policy,
     Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy, and
     Pofessor of Health Services Management and Leadership and of Health Care Sciences
• Leighton Ku, PhD, MPH    Professor and Director of the GW Center for Health Policy Research
• David Stevens, MD
     Professor of Health Policy

Staff:

• Emily Jones, MPP
• Lee Repasch, MA
• Brian Bruen, MS
• Ross Marguiles
• Elizabeth Dawes
• Fraser Byrne
• Kate Buchanon
• Kwesi Smith

Contact

Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy
GG/RCHN CHF Research Collaborative
2021 K St., NW, Suite 800
Department of Health Policy
School of Public Health and Health Services
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20006
Phone: (202) 994-4144
Fax: (202) 994-4040
Email: pshin@gwu.edu
Website: http://www.gwumc.edu/sphhs/departments/healthpolicy/ggprogram/
Director: Peter Shin, PhD, MPH