Kenneth T. Jones, PhD, MS

Bio

Dr. Kenneth T. Jones, PhD was recently promoted to Deputy Executive Director of the VHA Office of Health Equity (OHE). He started his VHA career in OHE in 2012 and has served in many roles, including Acting Chief Officer in 2018. Kenneth helped create VHA's first Health Equity Action Plan and the National Veterans Health Equity Report; spearheaded the development of the Veterans Geography of Opportunity Tool that highlights the social, economic, and health conditions in communities where Veterans live; served as co-investigator of one of the largest studies of Transgender Veterans, coordinated VHA participation in the Healthcare Equity Index; and oversaw the funding and support of health equity themed quality improvement projects. He also created the Health Equity listserv with over 150,000 subscribers to date and helped design OHE's Focus on Health Equity and Action Cyberseminar series with HSR&D.

As the Director of Analytics, Kenneth strengthened the capacity of operational staff, researchers, and stakeholders to address the health equity needs of Veterans related to COVID-19 through the development of analytic teams, standardized code and documentation, and a platform to increase communication between operational staff and researchers. He has led the Analytic team in developing and maintaining dashboards related to COVID-19, patient satisfaction for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Veterans, and social determinants of health using ICD-10 codes. He also led the development of databases to help VHA staff and researchers better identify Veteran race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Kenneth has a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1999), a master's degree (2001), and a doctorate from the Columbia University School of Social Work in New York (2012). He also has a Health Care Executive Leadership certificate from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (2019). He was an inaugural fellow of the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity (2017), sponsored by George Washington University and Atlantic Philanthropies.