Jody Heymann, MD, PhD, is founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center and served as dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health from 2013-2018.
As director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD), Heymann leads an unprecedented effort to improve the level and quality of comparative policy data available to policymakers, researchers and the public. WORLD examines health and social policies and outcomes in all 193 UN countries. WORLD’s mission is to strengthen equal opportunities worldwide by identifying the most effective public sector approaches, improving the quantity and quality of globally comparative data available, and working in partnerships to support evidence-based improvements in countries worldwide. WORLD has worked with global bodies (WHO, UNICEF, UNDESA, UNESCO, ILO, and others), civil society in over 100 countries, research groups, private sector leaders, and other global change agents. In 2023, WORLD will be launching new policy data on accelerating progress toward achieving gender equality in the economy, with data from 193 countries on topics including girls’ access to education, sexual harassment and discrimination at work, and policies that support gender equality in work and in caregiving across the life course. WORLD’s analyses of constitutions in all 193 UN member countries and their role in strengthening social and economic rights contributed to creating a Partnership for Advancing Constitutional Equal Rights. WORLD’s launches on policies affecting children reached people in 190 countries, as did their No Ceilings partnership with the Clinton and Gates Foundations on equal opportunities for women, men, girls, and boys. Heymann previously held a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy at McGill University where she was the founding director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy. While on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, she founded the Project on Global Working Families. Heymann has received numerous honors, including election to the U. S. National Academy of Medicine in 2013 and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2012.
Heymann has authored and edited more than 500 publications, including 19 books. Selected titles include Equality within Our Lifetimes (University of California Press, 2023), Advancing Equality (University of California Press, 2020), Changing Children’s Chances (Harvard University Press, 2013), Making Equal Rights Real (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Lessons in Educational Equality (Oxford University Press, 2012), Protecting Childhood in the AIDS Pandemic (Oxford University Press, 2012), Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder (Harvard Business Press, 2010), Raising the Global Floor (Stanford University Press, 2009), Trade and Health (McGill Queens University Press, 2007), Forgotten Families (Oxford University Press, 2006), and Healthier Societies (Oxford University Press, 2006).