Professor and Faculty Graduate Coordinator - Health Policy and Management and Social and Behavioral Sciences
College of Public Health
Master of Public Health
Dr. Jonathan VanGeest is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. Prior to his arrival at Kent State, Dr. VanGeest served as a Department Chair in the School of Community Health and Policy at Morgan State University, where he also directed the university’s Center for Health Informatics, Planning and Policy. He also has previous experience working as a Senior Scientist and Program Director in Science, Quality and Public Health at the American Medical Association (AMA) and as a Scientist in the AMA’s Institute for Ethics, an academic research and training center uniquely situated within the nation’s largest medical professional association.
Dr. VanGeest’s research focuses on racial and ethnic disparities in health care, limited health literacy, and care outcomes associated with structural changes in medicine. He also has extensive experience in survey research methodology and program evaluation. Dr. VanGeest has published in leading health and policy journals and co-edited one of the first textbooks on limited health literacy. He is an Associate Editor for BMC Medical Research Methodology and he is on the Editorial Boards for Evaluation and the Health Professions (EHP), a quarterly journal providing a forum for health professionals interested in health evaluation research and practices, and the Journal of Substance Abuse and Alcoholism. A guest-edited special issue of EHP on surveying clinicians was published in September 2013. Dr. VanGeest has served on numerous state and national committees, including the Institute of Medicine’s Liaison Panel on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel to Evaluate U.S. Standard Certificates and Reports. He currently serves as a Section Councilor for the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association.
Education
Ph.D., Medical Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago 1998
M.A., Sociology – Urban Studies (Dual Degrees), Michigan State University, 1991
B.S., Sociology, Michigan State University, 1988