Christopher A. Langston, PhD, is an executive, health services researcher, and national leader in philanthropy with 20 years of experience in transforming health care to improve outcomes and value in the care of older Americans. In 2019, he was named President and CEO of Archstone Foundation by its board of directors, its second executive leader.
Previously, (2016-2018) he served at the Aging in New York Fund as its Vice President of HealthCare Services, working to advance the integration of healthcare and social services in partnership with New York City’s Department for the Aging. From 2007 to 2015 he served as the Program Director of the John A. Hartford Foundation, where he was responsible for the Foundation’s grantmaking in support of its mission to improve the health of older Americans. He served five years on the board of directors of Grantmakers in Aging, the nation’s largest affinity association of funders in the broad field of aging, including three years as board chair.
While at Hartford he developed an outstanding team of diverse program staff. With his colleagues, signature achievements include: winning a $3 million grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to disseminate an evidence-based collaborative-care model of depression treatment to federally qualified health centers; conducting and publicizing three national public opinion polls of older adults views of health reform; and developing The Change AGEnts, a national network of scholars and experts mobilized to make large-scale change in health care delivery. With the Hartford board and staff, he led the foundation’s recent strategic planning process, shifting its focus from academic capacity building in geriatrics and gerontology to a “downstream” strategy of making wide-spread practice change to improve the health of older adults.
Dr. Langston re-joined Hartford in 2007 after two years at The Atlantic Philanthropies, where he was a program executive on the U.S. Ageing Team in the Human Capital Development subprogram in aging and health. While at Atlantic, he worked across health professions and strategies to improve the health of older adults domestically and internationally. He led the development of a $30 million public-private partnership with the federal Administration on Community Living for the national spread of the Stanford Chronic Disease Self-Management Program and other evidence-based programs. His tenure was marked by Atlantic’s initiation of the ongoing Health and Aging Policy Fellows and Practice Change Leaders programs to help geriatric experts expand their influence.
Dr. Langston worked previously at the Hartford Foundation for eight years, rising to Senior Program Officer. While at Hartford, he developed many projects, including IMPACT, the largest randomized controlled trial of depression treatment in the US and a geriatrics curriculum program through the Association of American Medical Colleges reaching 40 medical schools.
Dr. Langston earned his PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan, taught at Purdue University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, and was a post-doctoral fellow in late-life mental and physical health co-morbidities at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Geriatric Center’s Polisher Research Center.