David L. Wood, MD, MPH, FAAP

Dr. Wood graduated with honors from Harvard University, completed medical school and pediatric and preventive medicine residencies at UCLA. He also completed a fellowship in Health Services Research at RAND/UCLA. He is currently a Tenured Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics at the East Tennessee State University. For more than twenty years his research and advocacy efforts have focused on improving the health and health care for underserved children and adults. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, reports, and book chapters. He has founded programs for and conducted advocacy-oriented research on multiple groups of disadvantaged children, including poor children, children in homeless shelters, children in foster care and youth with special health care needs. He directed the Jacksonville Health and Transition Services (JaxHATS) program from 2005 until late 2014, a model patient-centered medical home to over 1000 medically complex and developmentally disabled youth and young adults. Dr. Wood has been active in advocacy for disadvantaged children and adults, with a focus on children and adults with IDD, serving as a gubernatorial appointee to the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council for over 12 years. In his current position, Dr. Wood is working with ETSU colleagues and community partners to evaluate the health and health care services of children, youth and young adults in Middle Appalachia and to build high quality health care system for to meet those needs