Enola Proctor’s research is motivated by the question, how do we ensure that people receive the very best possible care? She has studied this question in a variety of social work, public health, and health care settings, ranging from hospitals to community agencies. She has contributed to the intellectual capital for the rapidly growing field of dissemination and implementation science, leading teams to distinguish, clearly define, develop taxonomies, and stimulate more systematic work to advance the conceptual, linguistic, and methodological clarity in the field.
Proctor’s research has been funded by the NIA, AHRQ, and the NIMH for 26 consecutive years. She directs the Implementation Research Institute, a training program in implementation science funded by the National Institute for Mental Health. She led the establishment of several university-wide centers and cores in implementation science, including the Center for Dissemination and Implementation for the Washington University Institute for Public Health and the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core for Washington University’s CTSA program.
Proctor’s awards include Washington University’s Arthur Compton Holly Distinguished Faculty Award, the Society for Social Work and Research’s Distinguished Research Award, and the American Public Health Association Stephen M. Banks Award for Outstanding Mentoring in mental health services.
Dr. Jason Purnell joined the James S. McDonnell Foundation as President and CEO in 2023, following his leadership in community health improvement at BJC HealthCare. There, he developed health equity programs and introduced an anchor institution agenda focused on investments in high-poverty communities of color.
This work built on nearly a decade of scholarship at Washington University’s Brown School, where Purnell served as Assistant Professor (2011–2017) and Associate Professor (2017–present) of Social Work, founding director of Health Equity Works (formerly For the Sake of All), and faculty director of Thriving Communities at the Center for Social Development. He also held faculty affiliations with the Institute for Public Health, the Prevention Research Center, and the Center for Public Health Systems Science. In 2014, he and his collaborators released the seminal “For the Sake of All” report, addressing African American health in St. Louis and inspiring significant policy changes and programmatic innovations. A follow-up report, “Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide,” led to the establishment of an affordable housing trust fund for St. Louis County.
Purnell’s scholarship spans more than 60 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and policy reports on the social determinants of health, health equity, and psychological well-being. His work has appeared in journals including JAMA, the Annual Review of Public Health, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and his commentary has been featured in CNN.com, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Boston Review. He was appointed to the 2020 Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where he served until 2025 and was a member of the advisory board for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Fellows program.
Purnell holds a bachelor’s degree in Government and Philosophy from Harvard University, a doctorate in Counseling Psychology from The Ohio State University, and a master’s in public health from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in a National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention and Control Training Program.
He has been recognized nationally and locally for his contributions to public health and leadership, including being named an Eisenhower Fellow with travel to Rwanda and Spain (2022), one of Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Diverse Healthcare Leaders (2021), and the St. Louis American’s Person of the Year (2016).
Purnell is on a leave of absence from the Brown School.
Mark R. Rank is widely recognized as a foremost expert on issues of poverty, inequality, and social justice. His research on the lifetime risk of poverty has been groundbreaking, demonstrating for the first time that a majority of Americans will experience poverty at some point during their lives.
To date he has written a dozen books on a range of subjects, including a new understanding of poverty, an exploration of the American Dream, and the role of rugged individualism in shaping patterns of inequality. His most recent book is entitled, The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us. In addition, he has published articles in many academic journals across a wide variety of fields.
Dr. Rank is the recipient of numerous awards over the years for his scholarship, books, and teaching, and his research is widely reported throughout the national and international news media. His work is frequently discussed in major news outlets, including various programs on NPR, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, BBC, and others. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Time Magazine, Globe and Mail, USA Today, Chronicle of Higher Education, and many more.
He has also provided expertise and advice to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the White House, and many national organizations involved in issues of economic and social justice. His research was cited by then-President Barack Obama in a major speech on economic mobility, as well as by former presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Prof. Rank has developed a website, Confronting Poverty, that allows users to explore in greater depth the issues of poverty and economic inequality. The site, whose centerpiece is an innovative poverty risk calculator, is being used in universities and high schools across the country, along with various social justice and community organizations. To date, the website has had over 2 million page views with visitors from more than 200 countries.
Alison Rico has more than a decade of clinical experience and a specialized interest in the areas of mental health within the realms of law, healthcare and foster care. She currently serves as the manager for the Mental Health Concentration in the Office of Field Education.
Rico also teaches foundation practicum and mental health theory courses as well as taking on roles as a mental health curriculum lead and co-chair for the Mental Health Concentration Antiracist Committee.
Rico’s interest in the integration of social work and mental health in addition to her years of work with adults and children have significantly influenced her pedagogy and her approach to helping students prepare to take on the challenge of becoming social workers with diverse and inclusive approaches within the practice of mental health.
After earning her MSW from the Brown School in 2006, Rico worked several years in law and healthcare in several capacities as well as within the foster care community providing individual and family therapy, facilitating workshops and teaching coping and life skills to both adolescents and adults with chronic mental illness. In 2011 Rico started her private practice serving children, youth and families within the adoption and foster care system as well as with the general community providing therapeutic services that assisted clients with managing issues such as depression, anxiety, attachment issues and trauma.
Stephen Roll’s (he/him) research focuses on promoting asset building, debt management, and economic security in lower-income populations. Working within the Center for Social Development, where he is the Director of Research, he is involved in research on cash transfers, child savings, and the role of public and employer-based benefits programs in promoting (or harming) economic and social mobility. Roll serves on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Affairs and as a co-lead of the Grand Challenges for Social Work Network to Reduce Extreme Economic Inequality.
His most recent work focuses on the role of cash transfer programs in improving household balance sheets and economic mobility outcomes, which includes studies of the Expanded Child Tax Credit and six Guaranteed Income experiments in Georgia, North Carolina, and Missouri. He is also leading studies examining the barriers to economic mobility embedded in many public benefits programs.
His work has been featured in numerous media outlets including The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he has briefed the White House Domestic Policy Council, the Senate Joint Economic Committee, and the United States Supreme Court on the results of his research.
Prior to joining the Brown School, he worked in the private sector as a consultant for Proctor & Gamble.
Barry Rosenberg’s passion is human service excellence. He prepares graduates and current professionals to skillfully manage and lead human service organizations which improve lives, build communities and transform society.
Rosenberg teaches courses in leadership, management, organizational behavior and the innovative Brown Consulting. Rosenberg also leads executive education, having designed and taught CEO Seminar: Building an Effective Fundraising Organization, Inside the CEO, for senior managers preparing to advance their careers, and Building a High Performing Governing Board. His scholarly work focuses on leadership, nonprofit board governance, professional development, and the application of social work knowledge and skills to Jewish organizations and fundraising.
Rosenberg will lead the Center for Human Services Leadership as part of the Delmar DivINe co-location facility, opening in early 2021. The Center will conduct education, applied research and convenings to support organizational capacity in the St. Louis region.
Previously, Rosenberg completed a 37-year career in non-profit leadership, culminating as CEO of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis – the Jewish community’s central fundraising, planning and community building organization. He was a nationally recognized advocate and innovator in efforts to develop and strengthen the professional workforce of Jewish human service agencies and created the Millstone Institute for Leadership Development.
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