Ruth Katz

Ruth J. Katz is Executive Director of the Health, Medicine and Society (HMS) Program at the Washington, D.C.-based Aspen Institute, an educational and policy studies organization. HMS informs the national conversation on health, medicine, and biomedical research. 

Katz joined the Aspen Institute after serving from 2009 to 2013 as Chief Public Health Counsel (Democratic Staff) with the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. She was Dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University from 2003 to 2008 and Associate Dean for Administration at the Yale University School of Medicine from 1997 to 2003. She previously held positions on the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health, chaired by C. Everett Koop and David Kessler.

Katz, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, holds a law degree from Emory University and a Masters of Public Health from Harvard. A current member of the CDC Foundation, she has served on public and non-profit sector boards and committees at Emory University, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, CDC, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.