On November 7th, the Academy presented Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder in Residence at PolicyLink and David Blumenthal, MD, Professor of the Practice of Public Health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School with the 2023 Robert M. Ball Award for Outstanding Achievements in Social Insurance. Guests attended a reception held at The REACH at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder in Residence at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity for all. Under Angela’s leadership, PolicyLink gained national prominence in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. Angela is also the host of the Radical Imagination podcast and Professor of Practice at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley and attended Howard University.

David Blumenthal, MD, MPP is Professor of the Practice of Public Health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School. He is also a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. From 2013-2023 he was President of the Commonwealth Fund. From 2009-2011 he served as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama. In this role, Dr. Blumenthal led one of the largest public investments in technology in our nation’s history, modernizing the healthcare IT sector.

Photos by Sam Kittner.

See all sponsors.