Jason Lerner

Jason Lerner is Portfolio Director at the Health Lab of the University of Chicago Urban Labs. He has spent the past twenty years working at the nexus of public health and public safety. Trained as an attorney and social worker, he has dedicated his career to the pursuit of fairness and equity in our nation’s criminal justice system. His work spans all major touchpoints of the public safety ecosystem, including prevention and treatment, 911/emergency response, policing, courts, corrections, and reentry services. He has extensive experience managing complex research and technical assistance projects across the country.

Jason oversees Health Lab’s crisis response and diversion/deflection portfolio, including evaluations of several promising alternative response programs and community-based interventions for multi-system “high-utilizers.” He also manages the lab’s body of 911 predictive analytics and qualitative work with 911 system stakeholders. Prior to joining the Health Lab, Jason spent several years with Crime Lab New York-one of Health Lab’s sister labs-where he managed multiple large-scale field studies, including an evaluation of the impact of outdoor lighting on crime in and around New York City. He also worked at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where he coordinated NYC’s RXStat program, a multi-agency public health-public safety collaboration for responding to problem drug use and overdose mortality.

Jason holds a B.A. and J.D. degree from Rutgers University and an M.S.W. from Columbia University.