Joel Nitzkin

About Joel

Joel L. Nitzkin serves as a consultant to R Street, shaping much of their tobacco control policy, and speaking on behalf of such policy to state and local authorities, the American Medical Association and federal authorities.

Joel is a public health physician and is board certified as a specialist in preventive medicine. He has been a local health director, a state health director and president of two national public health organizations. He has been active in the tobacco control arena since the 1970s and played a lead role in developing and securing passage of early anti-smoking legislation in New York State and Louisiana.

He is currently in the private practice of public health as a health policy consultant. In this capacity, he has taken on a number of research and teaching assignments for federal, state and local public health agencies; assisted with accreditation of a managed care organization; and done substantial expert witness work related to communicable disease control, disaster response, health care quality, and tobacco control. He also served as the co-chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians.

Joel has a master’s degree in epidemiology from UC-Berkeley, a master’s and doctorate in public administration from Nova Southeastern University and his M.D. from Wayne State University School of Medicine.