Senior Associate Editor
Jason is a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and School of Public Health at the University of California-Berkeley. He directs the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and the Center for Global Healthy Cities. He also co-directs the joint Master of City Planning (MCP) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program at UC Berkeley.
Jason’s research, practice, and teaching focus on urban health in the US and globally. He leads action-research projects that explore the links between environmental health and social justice in cities, notions of expertise in science-based policy-making, and the role of local knowledge in promoting greater urban health equity.
Jason works to build partnerships between urban residents, professional scientists and decision-makers to collaboratively generate policy and planning solutions that improve the qualities of cities and the well-being of residents, particularly the poor and people of color. His research and practice addresses racial/ethnic disparities in health, citizen-science, community health & healing, urban gun violence, climate justice, health-in-all policies, and informal settlements and health equity.
His book, Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice (MIT Press, 2005), won the 2007 Paul Davidoff best book award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. He is also author of Toward the Healthy City: People, Places, and the Politics of Urban Planning (MIT Press, 2009), Healthy City Planning: From Neighborhood to National Healthy Equity (Routledge, 2013), and co-editor of Slum Health: From the Cell to the Street (University of California Press, 2016).
Jason holds a BA from Brandeis University and a PhD and MCP from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.