Amy J.H. Kind

Dr. Amy J.H. Kind, MD, PhD is a world-renowned expert in the field of disparities-focused exposome science, social determinants, and Alzheimer’s disease. Her field-changing research launched new NIH and Congressional initiatives on exposome study, is heralded as a model for open data, and provides the foundation for Medicare’s new 2023 federal equity-payment models.

Kind’s work fundamentally changes the way we conceptualize health disparities, by refocusing policy, research and clinical delivery from the single individual to the social exposome (the individual’s life-course context). Kind developed and extensively studied the geo-precise Area Deprivation Index (ADI), the now dominant metric of social exposome study. Kind’s ADI serves as the foundation for Medicare’s ground-breaking 2023 federal equity health payment policy (ACO-REACH). She makes the ADI available to all through the Neighborhood Atlas, a free first-of-its-kind online data democratization tool that provides ADI access and visualizations for every neighborhood in the US. Her Atlas data are accessed over one-half million times, employed by thousands of research teams, and applied across NIH core research resources, state and federal policy, health system operations, and industry product development. Her work directly led to 2022 Congressional appropriation for exposome-brain health research, is heralded by NIH as an open science exemplar, published in top journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, and garners many national awards. Kind has been continuously NIH funded, with a current NIH research portfolio exceeding $40 million. Her portfolio includes developing and leading the NIH-funded $28 million “Neighborhoods Study”, a first-in-field 23-site national consortium on life-course exposome and imaging, fluid and neuropathological markers of Alzheimer’s disease. While my clinical interests and focus as a geriatrician have been in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, my research program has collected a wide array of data that also informs on diabetes, obesity and other metabolic diseases.

Dr. Kind currently serves as the Associate Dean for Social Health Sciences and Programs at the University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Medicine and Public Health. As Associate Dean, Dr. Kind serves as Executive Director of the $400 million Wisconsin Partnership Program grant-making endowment, Director of the UW Center for Health Disparities Research, and provides oversight to the Milwaukee-based Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships.  In addition, Dr. Kind is a Professor of Medicine and serves as Leader of the Care Research Core of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.