My ambition is not individual but collective -- to build a bigger we and expand the circles of opportunity so that the Rhode Island Department of Health and our field can be more effective in creating the truly upstream transformations that we know are necessary to create the conditions for health equity.
Julian Drix
Asthma Program Manager
Rhode Island Department of HealthJulian Drix is the asthma program manager at the Rhode Island Department of Health, where he works to promote health equity in asthma by focusing on the socioeconomic and environmental factors that cause health inequities. He joined the field of public health from a community-based environmental justice advocacy background, and believes in applying the power of public health in support of transformative movements for equity and justice.
He is a member of the Environment Section and Environmental Justice Subcommittee of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and was elected by the Section as an APHA Governing Councilor. Julian is a MPH candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellowship, and is a Fellow with the Kresge Foundation’s Emerging Leader in Public Health Initiative. He earned his BA with honors in Africana Studies at Brown University in 2008.
BOLD SOLUTION: In support of Rhode Island’s collaborative evidence-based asthma home visiting program, Julian worked with Medicaid to secure approval to access the pediatric Medicaid claims database including individual addresses. These data are being used for many purposes, including economic evaluation of asthma home visiting; encouraging Medicaid payers to expand coverage of comprehensive asthma services; mapping neighborhood level asthma hot spots; assessing housing instability and displacement; and working with Rhode Island’s environmental and public transit agencies to prioritize asthma hot spot neighborhoods for zero emission electric buses.
