Health Policy & Management

Dr. Janice Cooper, an expert on child mental health policy, is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Health Policy and Management and teaches a graduate course on child health policy within the Department. Dr. Cooper has recently been appointed as the Interim Director of Mailman School's National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), a Center within the Department of Health Policy and Management. She holds a doctorate in health policy from Harvard University where she was an Archibald Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School. She also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Essex, Colchester, England and Columbia University. Dr. Cooper is a member of the Multicultural Advisory Committee for New York State Office of Mental Health, a Director-at-Large of the American Orthopsychiatry Association and is a Fellow and former Secretary of the Board of the American College of Mental Health Administration (ACMHA).

Dr. Cooper has worked in the private, public and non-profit sectors in the United States and abroad. Her prior positions include: Director, Children's Mental Health Division, State of Minnesota; Director, New York State Coalition for School-Based Primary Care; Associate, Abt Associates; and Coordinator, AIDS and Family Life Education, Christian Health Association of Liberia. Dr. Cooper has been NCCP's Director for Child Health and Mental Health. Her research has focused on quality of care for children and youth and includes cultural and linguistic competence and mental health financing. In 2008 she was the lead author on Unclaimed Children Revisited: The Status of Children's Mental Health Policy in the United States. She continues to lead the work of the Unclaimed Children Revisited project, a series of policy and impact analyses and state-based case studies. Dr. Cooper also directs NCCP's adolescent health initiative, as well as Project THRIVE and Project LAUNCH, two early childhood grants.