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NY Governor Andrew Cuomo Names President Bradley to Advisory Board Addressing State’s Re-Opening

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has named Vassar College President Elizabeth H. Bradley as a member of an advisory board that will help shape policies and protocols as the state plans the re-opening of the economy.

Photo: John Abbot and Pat Arnow/Wikimedia Commons

Bradley is one of only 12 leaders of institutes of higher education selected to serve on the 116-member working group, called the New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board. “We’ve come up with a phased plan to re-open New York so every region in the state has the same opening template as we begin this process,” Governor Cuomo said, “We have to be smart about this—emotions can’t drive our re-opening process—and we’ve come up with factual data points that each region must monitor as they begin to re-open. We’ve also created a New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board made up of business, academic, community and civic leaders from across the state to help guide this process and ensure businesses are following the necessary guidelines to preserve public health as we work towards a new normal.”

“I am honored to be selected as a member of the advisory group and look forward to contributing in any way I can,” said Bradley, a noted global health expert. “Throughout this pandemic I have been in regular contact with state and county officials who oversee our public health system, commerce, and regulatory environment, and I am confident they are working day and night to get higher education, our business sector and economy back on track.”

As President of a noted residential college, Bradley and others in her administration have been working on contingency plans for returning students to campus as soon as it is deemed safe to do so. She will bring those plans and discussions to the work she does as a member of New York Forward.

Bradley, who was named Vassar’s 11th President in September 2017, is a global health care scholar, the former director of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute and co-author of The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less.

As the head of the Institute, which operates education and research programs in China, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and South Africa, Bradley led teams that helped transform Ethiopia’s health care system, enhancing the quality of hospital management and availability of primary care. Since coming to Vassar, Bradley has forged a partnership with the University of Global Health Equity, a new medical school in Rwanda.

Early in her career Bradley was a hospital administrator at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she helped lead the first generation of quality improvement efforts as part of the National Demonstration in Quality Improvement in Health Care, the inspiration for much of her subsequent research.

Bradley graduated from Harvard University in 1984. She earned an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1986, and a PhD in Health Policy and Health Economics from Yale University in 1996.