Public Health Leader
In June 2005, Dr. Richard J. Jackson received the Presidential Distinguished Executive Award from President George W. Bush for his outstanding leadership and extraordinary achievement in service to the nation, and, in particular, to improving environmental public health. He is currently Professor of Environmental Health at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. The former Nutley resident served in many leadership positions with the California Health Department, including as the State Health Officer answering to Governor Schwarzenegger. For nine years, he was director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health in Atlanta.
Dr. Jackson’s family are three-generation members of Saint Mary’s parish. He was the first of three sons to Robert Jackson of Newark and Dorothy Devine now of Nutley. His father, who was a fighter pilot in World War II, developed acute polio and died in 1949 leaving his young wife and three babies. Dorothy married Joseph Connolly in 1953 and had four more children, two of whom remain in Nutley, Mary Connolly and Kathleen Connolly Mankowich. Jackson ascribes his career course in pediatrics, public health, and social justice as growing out of these experiences, and his education at Essex Catholic and under the Jesuits at Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City. He was one of 16 students in the third graduating class at Rutgers Medical School and went on to the University of California.
While in California, he carried out investigations that led to strengthening of farm worker health protection, food safety, and child health. His work led to the establishment of the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program and state and national laws that removed the licenses for a series of dangerous pesticides. With the Federal Government at CDC, he worked for the addition of folic acid to food to prevent birth defects, established the national asthma epidemiology and control programs, and oversaw the childhood lead poisoning prevention programs. He instituted the current federal effort to “biomonitor” chemical levels in the United States populations. He was the United States lead for several government efforts centering around health and environment in Russia, including radiation threats, one of which led to the addition of iodine to salt there and the prevention of many cases of retardation. In the later 1990’s he was the CDC leader in establishing the United States National Pharmaceutical Stockpile to prepare for terrorism and other disasters, which was activated on September 11, 2001.
Jackson ascribes his strong interest in Environmental Health to growing up in New Jersey. He is in much demand as a speaker, and in his talks to medical, civic, architectural and other groups he describes his delight with the wonderful walkability and layout of Nutley, the parks, library and the Nutley Oval. He also reflects on his dismay at the air and river pollution of that era, and recalls his sadness as an eleven year old child when the green space and parks next to the Passaic River were paved under Route 21.
Jackson is co-author of the book Urban Sprawl and Public Health, a 2004 book from Island Press. While he has served on many medical and health boards, in September 2005, he was selected to serve on the national Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). As an invited lecturer, he has been influential in convincing urban planners and elected officials, builders and developers to create environments that promote exercise, socialization, and health, in other words, to emulate the “best of Nutley” nationally and internationally.