Patrick J. Kennedy is one of the nation's leading mental health advocates and a former U.S. Congressman who represented Rhode Island's 1st district from 1995 to 2011. During his 16 years in Congress, he was the lead author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), signed into law in 2008 — the most landmark piece of mental health legislation since the 1960s — which requires insurers to cover mental health and substance use treatment no more restrictively than physical health care.

In 2013, he founded The Kennedy Forum to drive evidence-based mental health and addiction policy, uniting advocates, business leaders, and government agencies around full implementation of the federal parity law. In 2017, he served on the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.

Kennedy is the co-author of the 2015 New York Times bestseller A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction, and of Profiles in Mental Health Courage (2024). He co-founded One Mind to advance global brain research, and is co-chair of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and the Bipartisan Policy Center's Behavioral Health Integration Task Force.