Nathaniel Counts

Nathaniel Z Counts, JD is a part-time DPhil student in Population Health and Clarendon Scholar studying the upstream drivers of declining youth mental health in certain countries and potential policy solutions to address these drivers. Under the supervision of Professors Jennifer Dowd, PhD and Charles Rahal, PhD in the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, Nathaniel will be applying machine learning methods for causal inference to identify and model the forces likely shaping youth mental health, as well as how this feeds back into other outcomes of interest, such as macroeconomic growth. Nathaniel seeks to apply his findings directly to his advocacy work by advancing high-impact policies for improving youth wellbeing.

Nathaniel also serves as the Chief Policy Officer for The Kennedy Forum, a national mental health non-profit, as well as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. In his position with The Kennedy Forum, he advances a public policy agenda aimed at ensuring equitable access to effective and responsive services and supports, within a population health framework that focuses on prevention and social determinants of health. In previous roles, Nathaniel served as Senior Policy Advisor for Mental Health to the Commissioner of Health for the City of New York, where he advised on innovative financing, policy, and research strategies for achieving the city’s mental health goals. He received his JD cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was a Student Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, and his BA in biology from Johns Hopkins.