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Over the past 15 years Dr. Thomas has applied his expertise in behavioral science and health education in the African American community. His work has addressed several critical public health issues including, but not limited to, HIV/AIDS, youth violence, substance abuse and organ and tissue donations among African Americans.
Among the unique programs and strategies implemented by CMH under Dr. Thomas’ leadership are community-basedinterventions that range from the development of culturally tailored health communication materials designed to address an individual’s risk behaviors to using mass media to advocate for policy change. This initiative began in 2001 with “The African American Health Campaigns Promotion: Countdown to 2010.”Through CMH, Dr. Thomas established a team that mobilized the community to focus beyond the biomedical model and began to address a broad range of health disparity issues including breaking the cycle of poverty, exposing discrimination in access to health care and eliminating environmental hazards in homes and neighborhoods.
With leadership from The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Funders Forum on Health Disparities was established in 2002 to help support many of the innovative efforts designed by Dr. Thomas and his team.
Beginning in 2003, Dr. Thomas turned the tables on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ program titled “Take A Loved one to the Doctor Day.” Working with the knowledge that far too many African Americans in Pittsburgh do not have a medical home, Dr. Thomas and his team created “Take a Health Professional to the People Day” as a bridge to bring health professionals into African American barbershops and beauty salons for delivery of life-saving information.
The CMH established “Health Disparity Working Groups” as an ongoing infrastructure to plan and evaluate implementation of local grass-roots efforts to celebrate the annual National Minority Health Month each April when innovative strategies aimed at promoting health and preventing disease are deployed across greater Pittsburgh.
In 1995, he served as a consultant to the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Preventing HIV Transmission: The Role of Sterile Needles and Bleach. In 1998, he was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Reducing the Odds: Prevention of Perinatal Transmission of HIV in the United States. In 1997, he was an invited guest at the White House ceremony for the Presidential Apology to Survivors of the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.
In the spring of 2005, Dr. Thomas received the David Satcher Award from the Directors of Health Promotion and Education (DHPE) for demonstrating leadership in reducing health disparities that have resulted in the improvement of health promotion and health education programs at the state and local levels.
Dr. Thomas came to Pittsburgh in 2000 after eight years at Emory University in Atlanta where he was associate professor in the department of behavioral sciences and health education, and director, Institute for Minority Health Research at the Rollins School of Public Health. He also has held faculty positions at the University of Maryland, where he was co-founder and director of the Minority Health Research Laboratory; Southern Illinois University and the University of North Carolina.
A native of Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Thomas earned his doctorate in community health education from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He received his bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University.
CMH was established in 1994 with a generous grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. CMH is committed to taking a lead role in the nation’s prevention agenda developed to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities, as described in Healthy People 2010. CMH believes that the successful elimination of health disparities depends on the ability to establish trusting community partnerships designed to increase the participation of minority populations in biomedical and public health research.
