Dean G. Smith, PhD
Director, Louisiana Consortium for Health Transformation

Dean Smith is Dean of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans School of Public Health and Professor of Health Policy & Systems Management. He is also Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is committed to a line of teaching, research and service that provides a better understanding of the financial aspects of working with and working in health care delivery and financing organizations. He has published more than one hundred and fifty scientific papers and supervised more than fifty doctoral dissertations. He is Editor of the Journal of Health Administration Education and serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Managed Care and other journals. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan and his doctorate in economics from Texas A&M University.

Pooja Mehta, MD, MSHP, FACOG
Director of Maternal & Women’s Health Policy
Pooja Mehta is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans School of Medicine and of Health Policy & Systems Management in the School of Public Health. Dr. Mehta’s interests are in the effect of public policy on quality of and access to reproductive health care in safety net systems in the United States and South Asia. She has specific interests in LGB-TGNC health, reproductive infectious disease, and immigrant & global health. Her current work uses participatory action methods to elicit marginalized patient perspectives on reproductive autonomy and care, and incorporates these perspectives into delivery innovations that seek to reduce reproductive health disparities, maternal mortality, and low-value care. She received her undergraduate degree in History and Sociology from Columbia University. She obtained her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine through the Humanities and Medicine Program, and completed a Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellowship at Columbia University and the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, in Durban, South Africa. She completed her residency training at Boston University/Boston Medical Center, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center.