Patricia JONES

Title: Director

Office(s): Office of Special Populations (OSP)

Biography

Patricia Jones, DrPH, MPH, MS, MBA, leads the NIA's efforts in stimulating health disparities research related to aging. Dr. Jones is the Director of the Office of Special Populations. In this position, she advances the science of eliminating health disparities, facilitates addressing health disparities through basic, clinical and translational and behavioral and social science research, supports developing initiatives that strengthens NIA’s research and training opportunities available to underrepresented persons, including minorities and women, and advises other senior staff on health research related to underrepresented populations. Dr. Jones also directs the NIA Butler-Williams Scholars Program for early career aging researchers and serves as the Executive Secretary for the Task Force on Minority Aging Research (TFMAR), a task force to the National Advisory Council on Aging. Dr. Jones also has a leadership role in UNITE, a NIH initiative to end structural racism in biomedical and behavioral research.

Before accepting this role with NIA, Dr. Jones worked with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), where she served as a Health Scientist Administrator (HSA) for the Division of Clinical Innovation and served as the lead for a national strategic management and program evaluation initiative while simultaneously serving as a Program Director and Project Scientist for numerous awards that enhanced recruitment and retention of underrepresented persons in clinical trials, addressed health disparities, promoted Dissemination and Implementation Science, and facilitated Collaboration and Team Science. During her tenure with NCATS, Dr. Jones simultaneously served as NCATS’ point of contact for health disparities, Dissemination and Implementation Science, Behavioral and Social Science Research, Community and Patient Engagement, and Program Evaluation. Before joining NCATS, she was a Senior Health Specialist with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Prior to joining NIAID, Dr. Jones served as the Deputy Lead for the Research Synthesis and Translation Team in the Prevention Research Branch, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dr. Jones completed a doctoral degree in Public Health at Loma Linda University School of Public Health, a Master of Public Health at UCLA, a Master of Science in Biotechnology and a Master of Business Administration at the University of Maryland Global Campus, and a Bachelor of Arts degree at UC Berkeley.