Dr. Lloyd F. Novick’s Role in Establishing the Community Preventive Services Task Force

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Ron Bialek

The Public Health Faculty/Agency Forum led to the creation of the Council on Linkages with Dr. Novick serving as the second chair.

As we remember Dr. Lloyd Novick, it’s important to note the major impact he has had on the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice (Council on Linkages) as well as the emergence of evidence-based practice guidelines for public health. During his time as the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials representative to the Council on Linkages when he was serving as Director of the Office of Public Health for New York State, Dr. Novick advocated for development and publication of more evidence to help guide the practice of public health. He became Council on Linkages Chair in 1993 and served in this role through 1996. During this time, Dr. Novick led discussions about the need for a peer-reviewed journal to promote and publish public health research. This led to Dr. Novick founding the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice in 1995.

Dr. Novick also led the Council on Linkages effort that resulted in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) establishing the Community Preventive Services Task Force. While he was Chair, we applied for and received a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to test the desirability and feasibility of establishing evidence-based public health practice guidelines. In little over a year, we completed this initiative, having established panels of subject matter experts to identify, review, and rate literature in four different areas of public health. In one area, Tuberculosis treatment, the panel’s guidance on Directly Observed Therapy was published in JAMA. Having demonstrated both the desirability and feasibility of developing public health practice guidelines, we presented our findings to the Department of Health and Human Services and CDC, which led to CDC establishing the Community Preventive Services Task Force in 1996. This is often a forgotten story, but an important one about Dr. Novick’s lasting impact on our field.

We thank Dr. Novick for all he did, and he certainly will be missed.

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About the Author

Ron Bialek: Ron Bialek, MPP, has been serving as President and CEO of the Public Health Foundation (PHF) since 1997. He has focused PHF’s efforts on developing and implementing innovative strategies for improving performance of public health agencies and systems. Initiatives include developing performance management and quality improvement tools and training for public health professionals; developing the consensus set of Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals through the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice; and creating the Nation’s most comprehensive population health learning network – TRAIN. Mr. Bialek is an editor of the 2017 book, Solving Population Health Problems through Collaboration, and author of several chapters, and recently was one of the authors of Academic Health Department Partnerships: Bridging The Gap Between Town and Gown, published in 2024.

Before joining PHF, Mr. Bialek was on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health for nine years and served as Director of the Johns Hopkins Health Program Alliance. In his faculty role and as Director of the Health Program Alliance, Mr. Bialek took the theory of public health practice out into the field and developed an outstanding reputation locally and nationally for his efforts in facilitating linkages between academic institutions and public health agencies. At the national level, he directed such projects as the Public Health Faculty/Agency Forum and established the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice.

At the State and local levels, Mr. Bialek has done much to improve collaboration between public health agencies and Johns Hopkins. He has developed and directed projects such as: assessing community public health needs and resources, developing evaluation protocols for local health department services, providing technical support to and staffing of the Maryland Association of County Health Officers, and establishing a public health grand rounds series for State and local health department employees. Mr. Bialek Co-chaired the Coalition for Local Public Health in Maryland, which was successful in getting signed into law funding mandates to support essential local public health services. Mr. Bialek also has served on several State committees and is currently a member of the Prevention Block Grant Advisory Committee for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.