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Date: March 6, 2009
Contact: Jennifer Forbes
Communications & Public Affairs
Phone: 732-235-6356
Email: jenn.forbes@umdnj.edu
UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Hosts Expert on Racial, Ethnic and Socioeconomic Health Disparities
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ – A highly-regarded expert on the impact of racism on the health and well-being of the nation will be the featured speaker at the annual Mates David and Hinna Stahl Memorial Lecture on Bioethics, a free community seminar at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD, the research director on Social Determinants of Health and Equity in the division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will discuss her research on social determinants (economic and social conditions under which people live) of health and equity, and the impact of racism on health care during the free seminar at 4 p.m., Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at the Clinical Academic Building, room 1302, 125 Paterson Street, New Brunswick.
Dr. Jones is a family physician and epidemiologist who has developed new methods for comparing full distributions of data (rather than means or proportions) in order to investigate population level risk factors and propose population-level interventions. As a social epidemiologist, her work on race-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on race and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss. She hopes through her work to initiate a national conversation on racism that will eventually lead to a National Campaign Against Racism.
Recognized as a national expert on healthcare disparities, Dr. Jones is an adjunct associate professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Rollins School of Public Health both at Emory University. Previously, from 1994 to 2000, she was an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. From January through September 1999, she also was an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy, working in the Maori Health Branch of the New Zealand Ministry of Health in Wellington, New Zealand on the question, “Maori-Pakeha Health Disparities: Can Treaty Settlements Reverse the Impacts of Racism?”
Dr. Jones is an inaugural member of the National Board of Public Health Examiners, and recently completed service on the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association, the Board of Directors of the American College of Epidemiology, and the Board of Directors of the National Black Women’s Health Project. She was honored as the first recipient of the David Satcher Award by the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Health Promotion and Public Health Education in May 2003. Dr. Jones earned a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Wellesley College and her medical degree from Stanford University. She was granted a master’s in public health and doctorate in epidemilogy, respectively, from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
The endowed lecture is named in honor of Mates David and Hinna Stahl, parents of Theodore J. Stahl, MD, clinical professor of radiology and medicine. This is the twelfth lecture in the annual series. Parking is available at the Paterson Street deck, adjacent to the Clinical Academic Building.
For more information, directions and to RSVP for the seminar, call 732-235-5810.
