Board
Elizabeth Porth, PhD
Chair
An advocate for children, Elizabeth Porth, has long envisioned medical, dental and behavioral health care services delivered to underserved children in their schools using a wellness center model of school-based health care. She helped Education Plus Health to start its first school-based health center in 2011, and begin the process to establish the Pennsylvania School-Based Health Alliance. Dr. Porth has previously served as Director of Policy and Planning for the Family Resource Network of the School District of Philadelphia where she collaborated with the Department of Behavioral Health and co-authored and developed the implementation strategy for school-linked behavioral health services. In this capacity she worked to bring numerous grants, contracts, and partnerships to the School District of Philadelphia to improve education and health outcomes for students, while also serving as a member of Common Ground of the Mayor’s Children & Family Cabinet.
Dr. Porth gleaned her business experience as the sole proprietor of a private practice in Physical Therapy, teaching experience as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Graduate Department of Physical Therapy at Arcadia University, and administrative experience while serving for nine years as a School Director in Montgomery County and on the Board of Directors of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. She serves and has served as Director on multiple Boards among them Children’s Scholarship Fund Philadelphia, Hoops 4 Hope, Education Plus Health, Need in Deed, LaSalle Academy, Pan American Academy, Sunnybrook Golf Club and Club Pelican Bay. She is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia since 2012, one of the oldest medical organizations in the country. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Medical College of Pennsylvania where her doctoral dissertation focused on Public Law 94: 142 “the Right to Education”, Dr. Porth has evaluated numerous grants to benefit programs for children and older adults. She is also an avid outdoors-woman trekking across the globe to fish, snorkel, hike, and photograph nature in some of the most remote parts of the world.