Dr. Blum received his Ph.D from the Social Policies Planning Program at the University of California at Berkeley. He holds M.A. degrees in Educational Policy from Berkeley, and in Philosophy from Northwestern. His B.A. is in Philosophy from Penn State.

He teaches and writes in the areas of health care planning, mental health policy and administration and ethical issues in social policy. He has served on the faculty of the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley and the Aging Policies Program at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. He also has served as Vice-President of the Bay Area Foundation for Human Resources in San Francisco. The Foundation's Institute of Mental Health Policy and Administration provides training and program development for administrators of health and mental health agencies.

Since 1990, he has consulted with the Community Mental Health Block Grant Program, a part of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. His other consultation activities have been in long-term care for the elderly, and in ethical issues in a number of professions including medicine, mental health, law enforcement administration, and hospice.

For several years, he has served as a member of the Berkeley Police Department Reserve where he spent several thousand volunteer hours. He worked a variety of assignments as a uniformed officer in the Patrol Division, and spent two years working in plain clothes as a member of a Sex Cimes Task Force seeking to apprehend a serial rapist who had committed more than forty sexual assaults within the city.

Dr. Blum is the very proud father of two outrageously wonderful young daughters who (almost-) always do their best to help him keep his sense of perspective and sense of humor.