Stephen Downs, S.M., assistant vice president of the Health Group of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, views his work as an opportunity to address issues of great importance in making people’s lives better. He believes that the Foundation’s successes in health and health care “will help people spend more time with their families and loved ones, living longer and healthier lives, less encumbered by disease and disability.”

Downs, who joined the Foundation in May 2002, was appointed deputy director in April 2006. His wide-ranging responsibilities now include serving as a member of RWJF’s Pioneer Portfolio Team, which seeks innovative projects that catalyze fundamental breakthroughs in health and health care. He also brings the Pioneer Portfolio spirit of reinvention and iconoclasm to his ongoing work with the RWJF senior vice president and director for the Health Group and program staff to achieve the Foundation’s goals in reversing the epidemic of childhood obesity, driving fundamental improvements in the nation’s public health system, and addressing the needs of our most vulnerable populations.  Additionally, Downs continues to work with and advise Foundation staff in developing programs to expand health information technologies that can improve the quality of American health care. During his tenure at the Foundation he has created, developed, or overseen the Foundation’s investments in such key initiatives as Project HealthDesign, InformationLinks, the Health e-Technologies Initiative, the Public Health Informatics Institute, Connecting for Health, and Common Ground.

Before coming to the Foundation, Downs served as director of the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP), a U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration initiative that promoted the widespread availability and use of digital network technologies in the public and nonprofit sectors to provide better education, health care, public safety and other social services. During his eight-year tenure with TOP the agency provided more than 600 matching grants to state, local and tribal governments, health care providers, schools, libraries, police departments, and community-based nonprofit organizations.

Having begun his career in telecommunications in the private sector, Downs was also a former research fellow of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Born in New Hampshire, Downs earned an S.M. in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. in physics and applied physics from Yale University. He and his wife, Janet Estes, reside in Princeton and have two children.

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