Helen Ross Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
Affiliate Professor, Biological Sciences Collegiate Division
Affiliate Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences
Co-Founder, University of Chicago Crime Lab
Co-Director, University of Chicago Health Lab
The University of Chicago
Harold Pollack’s current NIH-funded research concerns improved services for individuals at the boundaries of the behavioral health and criminal justice systems, disabilities, and two major new efforts to address the opioid epidemic in Illinois and across the nation.
He is the former President of the Health Politics and Policy section of the American Political Science Association and has been appointed to three committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. He holds master's and doctorate degrees in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Before coming to Crown Family School, Professor Pollack was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University and taught Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, Pediatrics, and Social Service Review. His journalism regularly appears in such outlets as Washington Post, the Nation, the New York Times, New Republic, and other popular publications. His American Prospect essay, "Lessons from an Emergency Room Nightmare" was selected for the collection Best American Medical Writing, 2009.