Meet the Dean
Colleen L. Barry is a nationally and internationally recognized research scholar and educator with expertise in the areas of mental health and addiction policy and policy communication and currently serves as the inaugural dean of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.
She was the Fred and Julie Soper Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health from 2017 to 2021.
As founding dean of the Brooks School, Dr. Barry has an influential role in building Cornell’s newest school into one of international prominence, launching academic programs and partnerships across campuses, and developing a long-term vision and strategic priorities to position the School to improve people’s lives through public policy.
Dean Barry is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Social Insurance. While at Johns Hopkins, she was the founding director of the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy (CMAP) and the Johns Hopkins StigmaLab. She co-chaired the Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and has served as a board member and vice president for the Association of Public Policy and Management. She serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Sandy Hook Promise, a national organization dedicated to protecting children from gun violence.
Dean Barry’s research focuses on how health and social policies can affect a range of outcomes for individuals with mental illness and substance use, and communities at risk for violence. She also studies how communication strategies can increase public support for evidence-based policies to improve the health and wellbeing of people with mental illness and substance use disorders and reduce stigma. She directed the NIMH funded pre- and post-doctoral mental health services and systems training program at Johns Hopkins, and served as Principal Investigator of numerous large-scale research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and health-oriented foundations.
Dean Barry led major public opinion survey research projects including the bi-annual Johns Hopkins National Gun Policy Tracking Survey and the longitudinal Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Civic Life and Public Health Survey cohort study. Dean Barry has authored more than 240 peer-reviewed publications in leading policy and medical journals, and she considers effectively communicating research findings to decisionmakers a priority.
Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Dean Barry was a faculty member at the Yale University School of Public Health. She began her career in government and legislative affairs in Washington, D.C., and worked as a state health policy analyst in Massachusetts.