Dr. Barbara Berney, Project Creator, Producer of Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution, is Emeritus Associate Professor at City University of New York School of Public Health and a distinguished scholar in public health, environmental justice, and the U.S. health care system.

She taught health policy analysis, the US healthcare system, and documentary production for public health practitioners in the CUNY School of Public Health. She holds an MPH in Health Administration from UCLA and a PhD in Health Policy from Boston University where she was a Pew Scholar. Her diverse experience in public health includes working as a frontline health worker in south Los Angeles for the Los Angeles County Health Department. She went from there to Washington, DC to be a policy analyst with the United Mine Workers Health and Retirement Funds and with the Bureau of Health Professions in the Department of Health and Human Services.

She was recruited to be the Director of an OSHA-funded Occupational Health Education Center that provided occupational health education to women and minority workers. She went on to do an evaluation of a Foundation-funded program providing technical assistance to community groups dealing with toxic hazards for the Boston University School of Public Health.

She served as staff a member of the White House Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments and for the Environmental League of Massachusetts where she was one of the people responsible for getting requirements for green schools into Massachusetts legislation. She earned a BA is Political Science from Reed College.