Patricia (Polly) Pittman is an Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. Dr. Pittman holds a secondary appointment in the School of Nursing. She is also the director of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity and is the PI for two HRSA-funded Health Workforce Research Centers. Dr. Pittman teaches and focuses her research on health workforce policy. Her recent focus is on workforce innovations in the context of system change. She has provided research support for the RWJF Initiative on the Future of Nursing and with support from the MacArthur Foundation, has led a series of studies examining the recruitment of foreign-educated health professionals to the U.S.

Prior to joining the Department of Health Policy in 2010, she taught comparative health systems at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and served as Executive Vice President of AcademyHealth. Over the years, she has worked as a consultant on health systems research for the Pan American Health Organization, WHO’s Tropical Disease Research Program, World Bank, Johns Hopkins University, and multiple foundations. In the early part of her career she lived in Argentina, where she worked in human rights and later as the Director of Social Programs for the Province of Buenos Aires.