Mia A. Sedwick

Mia Sedwick is a project management associate for the Vulnerable Populations Portfolio, which creates new opportunities for better health and invests in health where it starts—in homes, schools and jobs. As she puts it: “We support promising ideas that address how health and healthcare intersect with poverty, education, and housing. We fund innovations along the entire continuum of development, including ideas that are just emerging, programs that show preliminary evidence of effectiveness, and tested models that can achieve greater impact.”

Mia joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 1999 to provide project management and communications support for project Connect—an RWJF program designed to build relationships between the Foundation grantees and members of Congress. During her early career at RWJF, she helped to design, direct and implement strategic communications for the Foundation’s addiction prevention and treatment efforts and assist the Pioneer portfolio in carrying out their communications strategy.

Mia has also helped the former RWJF Vulnerable Populations Portfolio design and execute their strategic communications. One such effort is Health Leads, which enables doctors to “prescribe” food, utilities assistance, job training, housing or other critical resources for their patients, just as they would prescribe medication. Patients then take these prescriptions to resource desks in clinic waiting rooms, where college volunteers “fill” them by connecting patients to the prescribed community services. She has also been involved with publicizing Playworks, a program that promotes physical activity and play at schools.

Previously, Mia worked with neurologically-impaired youngsters in the Verona Preschool Intervention Program. She was also a research assistant with the Rutgers University, Department of Biomedical Engineering, where her work involved detecting and evaluating diseases that result in cortical malfunctioning, such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.

Earlier in her career, she worked with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey helping children with histories of emotional, sexual and physical abuse that resulted in both emotional and behavioral problems.

Mia earned an MA in neuroscience from the University of Hartford in Connecticut and a BA in psychology and English from Rutgers University in New Jersey.