Thomas A. Farley, MD MPH has been a public health educator, researcher, and practitioner for more than three decades.  He has worked as a professor of public health and held positions in health agencies at the federal, state, and big city level. 

Dr. Farley was trained in pediatrics at Northwestern University in Chicago and in epidemiology in CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. In the 1990s, he worked at the Louisiana Office of Public Health, where he led prevention programs for HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis and vaccine-preventable diseases. In the 2000s, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, where he taught and conducted research on the promotion of physical activity, healthy eating, and the prevention of obesity. From 2009 to 2014, he was Commissioner of Health for New York City under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where he led initiatives on obesity and smoking prevention. From 2016 to 2021, he was Commissioner of Health for the City of Philadelphia, where he directed efforts to address the opioid crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2021 to 2023, he was the Principal Senior Deputy Director for the Washington, D.C. Department of Health, where he focused on the health of children.

Dr. Farley has authored or co-authored more than 100 scientific publications, is the coauthor of Prescription for a Healthy Nation (Beacon Press) and is the author of Saving Gotham: A Billionaire Mayor, Activist Doctors, and the Fight for 8 Million Lives (Norton).  He is now an Adjunct Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and an Adjunct Professor at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University.  He is working on a textbook Prevention of Diseases in Populations: From Biology to Policy (due in August 2025 from Jones & Bartlett Learning).  He writes a weekly newsletter on Substack called Healthscaping (healthscaping.substack.com).