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Biography:
Joseph W. Thompson, MD, MPH
Director
In addition to serving as ACHI's Director,
Joe Thompson is Surgeon
General for the State of Arkansas
and a Professor in the University of
Arkansas for
Medical Sciences (UAMS) Colleges of Medicine and Public
Health.
Dr. Joe Thompson’s work is centered at the
intersection of clinical care, public health and health policy. He
is responsible for developing health policy, research activities and
collaborative programs that promote better health and health care in
Arkansas. Dr. Thompson works closely with the Governor’s office,
the Arkansas legislature and public and private organizations across
the state on relevant health policy topics.
He has led vanguard efforts in planning and
implementing health care financing reform, tobacco- and
obesity-related health promotion and disease prevention programs.
Dr. Thompson was the lead architect of the Tobacco Settlement Act of 2000 and
instituted the Arkansas Health Insurance Roundtable. Under his
leadership, ACHI helped pass the Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006,
documented the state’s success in halting progress of the childhood
obesity epidemic, and helped implement ARHealthNetworks, Arkansas’s
health care benefits waiver for low-income workers.
Dr. Thompson has been at the forefront of both
Arkansas’s leading-edge efforts against childhood obesity and in
national efforts to reverse childhood obesity as the former Director
of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Center to Prevent
Childhood Obesity.
He currently serves on the Arkansas Board of
Health and is past President of the Arkansas Chapter of the American
Academy of Pediatrics. Nationally, Dr. Thompson serves on the board
of the Campaign to End Obesity and of AcademyHealth, as well as
serving on the Health Care Financing and Organization National
Advisory Panel. He is author of numerous articles and publications
that reflect his research interests in the areas of health and
health care including access, quality and finance.
Dr. Thompson earned his medical degree from the
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Master of Public
Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He
served as the RWJF Clinical Scholar at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Luther Terry Fellow in Preventive
Medicine advising the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health in
Washington, DC, and the Assistant Vice President and Director of
Research at the National Committee for Quality Assurance in
Washington, DC. In 1997, he served as the First Child and
Adolescent Health Scholar of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research
and Quality (then the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and
Research) before returning to Arkansas.
Publications
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