Our Team

As a Program Associate with CommonHealth ACTION (CHA), Mark Cervero provides support and subject matter expertise in various areas of CHA’s programmatic activities. Activities include research and writing concerning current public health and policy topics; technical assistance delivery to community groups, local governments, and other organizations; development of curriculum and other unique learning experiences around public health issues; and other organizational development tasks including proposal development and grant writing.

Mark’s writing for CHA includes two concept papers, the first of which outlines the connections among housing, the economy, employment, and health. His second concept paper addresses the historical and contemporary impacts of structural racism on the opportunities for individuals and communities to achieve optimal health. He works closely with the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services to operationalize an equity initiative throughout the department. He also works with and provides technical assistance to community organizations from Alabama to Baltimore to address health equity issues in their community. Mark is helping to develop a learning curriculum in partnership with the Virginia Department of Health, which aims to inform policy makers throughout the Governor’s cabinet on how the decisions they make affect health.

Prior to his current role, Mark served as a Lister Hill Health Policy Fellow at CHA. The stated purpose of the fellowship was to assist in the transfer of health policy and health services research skills to the policymaking setting, and to provide graduate students with a unique opportunity to learn about the political system through direct exposure to public or private sector roles in health policy development. Mark chose to pursue his fellowship at CommonHealth ACTION because the organization actively works in different sectors and on multiple levels of the policy making process. He believes that there is rarely a situation where a “both/and” strategy should not be applied, and health policy is no different. In order to address the issues facing the country, Mark believes that we must work on multiple levels and continue to innovate and integrate policy.

Previous to his work in Washington, Mark completed a Master’s in Public Health at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. In graduate school, Mark conducted research on state-level policy differences in organ donation guidelines, with a focus on the stark disparities in the receipt of transplants by people of color. He also collaborated on a project using clinical data and mapping techniques to observe the racial and geographic disparity in the distribution of HIV/AIDS in Birmingham. While pursing his graduate work, Mr. Cervero had an internship at a Ryan White Title IV clinic in Birmingham where he gained insight into the myriad ways in which health inequities manifest in the community.

Mr. Cervero is a Certified Public Health professional (CPH) and a graduate of the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he received his degree in Quantitative Policy Analysis (MPH). His coursework at UAB included Public Health Policy, Health Economics, Health Disparities, Modeling & Simulation, and Empirical Methods for Health Research.