JoAnn Stevelos, MS, MPH

JoAnn Stevelos, MS, MPH, is the Executive Director of the Andrew Levitt Center for Social Emergency Medicine. She brings more than two decades of public-health work turning evidence into action—at George Washington University on research and policy; with the Clinton Foundation’s Alliance for a Healthier Generation on large-scale school wellness; and globally with Monash University’s World Mosquito Program. Her career stays close to social justice and everyday care: co-investigator on child-sexual-abuse prevention in Aotearoa New Zealand; leader of an end-of-life supportive-care coalition at GW; director of children’s wellness research for the Alliance/Let’s Move!; and partnership builder on vector-borne disease strategy. Across roles, her approach is steady: ask a clear question, gather the right data, act, and keep trust with the people who live with the results. She writes about child abuse prevention on Substack (The Second Silence) and in her Psychology Today column, Children at the Table, and co-teaches the half-day workshop Wounded Leaders: Who Am I to Do This Work? She is a founding board member of The Hope Institute; The Hope Compendium (Oxford University Press) publishes in December 2025, and she is helping to disseminate it. JoAnn earned an MPH in Social Behavior and Community Health from the SUNY School of Public Health, an MS in Bioethics from Albany Medical College’s Alden March Bioethics Institute, and a BA from Columbia University

JoAnn enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and neighbors; traveling; cooking; reading; and enjoying theater, music, art, and films.