David Adler, MPA, is a program officer on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Coverage team. His work is focused on a variety of initiatives related to the Foundation’s ambitious goal of ensuring that all Americans have stable, affordable health insurance coverage. In particular, Adler oversees programs to educate and enroll individuals in coverage options made available by the Affordable Care Act, and projects that help states share information and best practices as they work through health policy issues.
Adler joined the Foundation in 2008 and brought extensive experience working with community-based agencies and individuals to help advance public health initiatives. He started his work at the Foundation with the Childhood Obesity team as a communications associate and joined the Coverage team in 2010, initially as a communications officer and later as a program officer.
Before coming to the Foundation, Adler directed communications for The Food Trust in Philadelphia, where he helped to produce compelling research reports that promoted increased access to healthy food in all communities. He achieved widespread media coverage for The Food Trust in USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NPR. He also helped to manage the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a first-of-its-kind grant and loan program to encourage supermarket development in underserved neighborhoods throughout Pennsylvania, which has since become a model nationwide for programs to attract supermarkets to food deserts.
Adler’s early career included teaching in adult literacy at Philadelphia’s Lutheran Settlement House and working in a pre-kindergarten program in Bilbao, Spain. He also served as a program coordinator of an initiative that allowed health care workers to advance in nursing careers as part of a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
Adler received a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College, a master of studies in Hebrew and Jewish Studies from the University of Oxford and a master of public administration from the University of Pennsylvania.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., he now resides in Lawrenceville, N.J. He enjoys running and has completed three (and counting!) half-marathons. He also loves to travel and study foreign languages.
