Our Advisory Committee

David Hemenway, Ph.D., is an economist, Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and Co-Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.  He has received ten Harvard teaching awards and the inaugural Community Engagement award given by HSPH students.  Dr. Hemenway has written five books, including Private Guns Public Health and over 260 articles in peer-reviewed journals—more than 130 on gun violence. He has been recognized by the CDC as one of the twenty “most influential injury and violence professionals over the past 20 years.”  Last year he was a Radcliffe Fellow. 

Dr. Natalie Hipple is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University. She studies the collaborative methods used by police departments to identify and reduce crime and disorder especially as they relate to gun violence. Her other research interests include incident reviews, higher education policing, homelessness, and evaluation of criminal justice programs. For the last 20 years, she has worked extensively with a variety of law enforcement agencies in Indiana, the mid-west, and across the United States. Dr. Hipple writes and speaks about nonfatal shootings regularly, focusing on making her work available to practitioners.

Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD is a clinical/forensic psychologist and attorney currently serving as Executive Director for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital (Harvard Medical School).  He is also Professor (Doctoral Clinical Psychology Program) at William James College in Newton, MA, where he teaches forensic psychology, law and mental health, and social policy approaches to youth and emerging adult behavioral health.   He has previously served in senior administrative and policy positions involving forensic behavioral health for the MA Department of Mental Health and the Massachusetts Trial Court.

Raised in the gun culture of West Texas, his commitment to gun violence prevention dates to the mid-1980’s when Boston led the nation in juvenile gun homicides, he worked at the Boston Juvenile Court Clinic, and he lived in neighborhoods afflicted by gun violence.  Dr. Kinscherff has served the American Psychological Association as Chair of its Gun Policy Review Task Force and contributor to an APA monograph on gun violence.  His service to APA has included representing APA on a national Expert Panel on Mass Violence, briefing a Rand Corporation working group on gun violence research priorities, participating at a White House Summit (2016) on breaking cycles of community violence, and presenting at Congressional Briefing on gun violence research needs jointly with the American Public Health Association, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the Urban Institute.  He has consulted and presented widely on multidisciplinary public health approaches to gun violence prevention and intervention with a particular interest in youth and emerging young adults.  His research and practice interests include devising developmentally aligned community-based programming for youth at risk of deep justice system penetration, implications of developmental neuroscience and social sciences for law and public policy, forensic evaluation and risk management of persons with histories of significant violence, and public health approaches to violence.

Dr. Lois Lee’s work focuses on pediatric emergency medicine, health disparities, injuries, and health policy. This is grounded in her clinical work as a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. At Boston Children’s Hospital she is the Associate Program Director for Public Policy at the new Sandra L. Fenwick Institute for Pediatric Health Equity and Inclusion.

She received her M.D. at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her residency in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and her pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. During that time, she also received her M.P.H. at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Lee has published seminal research on pediatric emergency medicine, health disparities, and injury prevention. With her expertise she holds national positions in the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine and the Council on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention. She is the inaugural director of the Academic Pediatric Association’s Health Policy Scholars Program, a career development program focused on health policy and advocacy. She is the co-chair of the Advocacy Committee and member of the Executive Council (Lead Advocacy) of the Society of Pediatric Research and a member of the Pediatric Policy Council, representing SPR, APA, AMPDEC, and APS. With her passion for improving the lives of children, she promotes child health through her clinical work, research, teaching, and advocacy.

Dr. Joseph Richardson is the Joel and Kim Feller Professor of African-American Studies and Medical Anthropology at the University of Maryland and one of eight scholars selected as an inaugural University of Maryland MPower Professor. MPower is a collaboration between the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park to strengthen Maryland’s innovation economy, advance interdisciplinary research, and solve important problems for the people of Maryland and the nation. Dr. Richardson is the Lead Epidemiologist for the Center for Injury Prevention and Policy at the University of Maryland R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center where he investigates gun violence, violent injury, community trauma and the effectiveness of violence prevention/intervention programs. He is the Executive Director of the Transformative Research and Applied Violence Intervention Lab an interdisciplinary gun violence research lab at the University of Maryland College Park. Dr. Richardson is the Executive Producer and Director of the award-winning digital storytelling project Life After the Gunshot which explores the lives of 10 young Black male survivors of violent firearm injury in Washington DC.

Dr. Chethan Sathya MD MSc is a Pediatric Trauma Surgeon and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded firearm injury prevention researcher. He serves as Director of Northwell Health’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention and oversees the health system’s expansive approach to firearm injury prevention. Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York State, has taken a public health approach to gun violence prevention, focusing on key areas such as research, medical education, clinical screening, advocacy and community engagement. Under Dr. Sathya's leadership, the center has leveraged Northwell’s diverse patient population and wide reach to implement ground breaking preventative strategies and perform high-level research.

Dr. Sathya was recently awarded $1.4 million from the NIH to study gun violence prevention and implement a first-of-its-kind protocol to universally screen among those at risk of firearm injury. The grant is part of the health system’s “We Ask Everyone. Firearm Safety is a Health Issue” research study, which aims to shift the paradigm to view gun violence as a public health issue and approach firearm injury risk similarly to other health risk factors like smoking and substance use. Furthermore, Dr. Sathya spearheaded the formation of the National Gun Violence Prevention Learning Collaborative for Hospitals and Health Systems, in which hospitals can learn about gun violence prevention from experts, develop best practices, and implement strategies to prevent firearm injuries.

Dr. Sathya is a powerful voice and advocate for firearm injury prevention. His role as a pediatric trauma surgeon in Chicago and New York has exposed him to the dramatic results of gun violence, fueling his passion to find solutions to the national issue. He has been an invited speaker at events such as the American Hospital Association Leadership Summit on Violence Prevention and the Healthcare Association of New York State symposium on best practices in gun violence prevention. Dr. Sathya is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Action Collaborative for preventing firearm-related violence and is a consultant to the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma for the National Firearm Injury Data Collection Initiative.  

Dr. Sathya is Associate Trauma Director at Cohen Children’s Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He completed medical school and general surgery training at the University of Toronto, followed by Pediatric Surgery Fellowship at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. He also holds a Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Toronto, in addition to  Fellowships in Global Journalism and Public Health.

Akash Patel was born in Camden, NJ in 1982. He received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Rice University and his M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine. He completed his internship in surgery and residency in neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine. During his residency, he was the recipient of the NIH R25 award. Dr. Patel joined the faculty of the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine in 2014 where he is currently an Associate Professor, Residency Program Director and Director of Brain Tumor Surgery. He specializes in skull base oncology and has a particular interest in the treatment of meningiomas and schwannomas. Dr. Patel has an NIH-funded research laboratory studying the molecular underpinnings of inherited and sporadic meningioma.

Dr. Patel is on the Executive Committee of the CNS and serves on the Board of the CNS Foundation. He resides in Houston with his wife Dr. Pooja Patel, an Ob/Gyn, and their three sons, Ishan, Kishan and Shiven.