PROFESSOR DAVID ROSENBLOOM

David Rosenbloom PhD is director of Join Together and professor of public health at Boston University School of Public Health.

Join Together is a programme of the Boston University School of Public Health, which helps communities fight substance abuse and gun violence. Join Together Online has become the nation's dominant electronic publisher of information on substance abuse. Its Demand Treatment! programme is a multi-year effort to drive up the demand for alcohol and drug treatment and intervention in american communities. Join Together also manages the Fighting Back national programme office.

Rosenbloom is also professor of public health at the Boston University School of Public Health, adjunct lecturer at Brandeis University, and a member of the National Institute on Drug Abuse national advisory cCouncil. He is a director of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Stop Handgun Violence. In addition, he founded Community Medical Alliance, a direct provider and insurer of medical care for people with catastrophic illness.

From 1975 to 1983, he was commissioner of Health and Hospitals for the City of Boston. In that capacity he served as the public health officer and CEO of the city's public delivery system, including Boston City Hospital, 22 neighbourhood health centres, and the emergency medical system.

From 1984 to 1988 he was vice president, and then president, of the Health Data Institute, a private company which pioneered the clinical analysis of medical claims data and developed many of the managed care tools and techniques used throughout the country today.

Rosenbloom grew up in Albany, New York. He received a BA from Colgate University in 1965 and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. He was assistant professor of government at Hamilton College and dDirector of Hamilton's Washington Semester Programme from 1970 to 1973. He is also the author of numerous books and articles on elections, health care, and substance abuse.