The Arnold School’s Department of Health Services Policy and Management and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control will host the 11th annual James E. Clyburn Health Disparities Lecture, which is free and open to the public, on Friday, April 6 at 10 a.m. at the University of South Carolina Alumni Center (900 Senate St. Columbia, S.C. 29201). The theme of the program is "We Can't Wait - Health Equity Now" and will feature Amani M. Nuru-Jeter as the keynote speaker.
Dr. Nuru-Jeter's lecture is titled “It’s the Skin You’re In”: A dialogue on racial health inequities AND a call to action! Her talk will explore the concept of race and discuss how conceptions of race impact the questions we ask, the nature of our scientific investigations, and the conclusions we draw from scientific evidence. Dr. Nuru-Jeter will discuss racism as a determinant of health and the need for conceptual rigor for advancing the study of race, racism and embodiment in public health research. Drawing on recent findings, the lecture will demonstrate the use of mixed methods research and intersectional framing to examine how racism gets into the body to impact health. Dr. Nuru-Jeter will also discuss the strengths and limitations of various population health approaches for when considering population health AND health inequities.
Speaker Bio
Amani M. Nuru-Jeter, Ph.D., M.P.H. is Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health. She is also Faculty Affiliate of the UC Berkeley Population Center, the UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine; and the Center on Social Disparities in Health and the Center for Vulnerable Populations at UC San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Nuru-Jeter’s broad research interest is to integrate sociological, demographic, epidemiologic methods to examine racial inequalities in health as they exist across populations, across place, and over the life-course. Her current program of research consists of four inter-related areas of inquiry: (1) The intersection of race, socioeconomic position, and gender in predicting health inequities, (2) socio-environmental stress and physiologic dysregulation; (3) the measurement and study of racial discrimination as a determinant of health inequities; and (4) effects of ‘place’ on health.
Dr. Nuru-Jeter is Principal Investigator of the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study, which examines the association between socio-environmental stress (e.g., racial discrimination), cardiometabolic risk, and physiologic aging among midlife African American women in the San Francisco Bay area; and Co-Investigator of the Bay Area Heart Health Study which examines similar associations among African American men with particular emphasis on internalized racism and cellular aging. Her research has included work on doctor-patient race-concordance; the intersection of race, socioeconomic position, and gender on risk for psychological distress, disability outcomes, adult mortality, and child health and development; racial residential segregation; income inequality; and race-related stress and mental health outcomes.
Dr. Nuru-Jeter earned her Ph.D. in Health Policy and Management (Faculty of Health and Social Policy) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, her M.P.H. in Maternal and Child Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, and her B.S. in Biology and Neurophysiology at the University of Maryland, College Park. After completing her doctorate, Dr. Nuru-Jeter was in the inaugural cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program at UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley, where she focused on population health sciences and mixed methods research.
Call for Abstracts
Students, faculty, staff and members of other academic institutions or community organizations are invited to submit abstracts by Friday, March 9 for consideration in a poster session. Abstracts should be 300 words or less and describe health disparities research or practice, particularly in the areas of the science of health disparities, social justice and special populations. The poster session will include a limited number of selected abstracts and will be held during the reception immediately following the lecture. Learn more about the call for abstracts.
For more information, please contact the poster session organizers:
Dr. Eberth, jmeberth@mailbox.sc.edu;
Dr. Torres, torresme@mailbox.sc.edu;
Dr. White, kwhite@mailbox.sc.edu
About the Lecture
Congressman James E. Clyburn, along with Senator Ernest F. Hollings, was instrumental in securing funding to establish the Institute for Partnerships to Eliminate Health Disparities in 2003. The Institute created a Lecture to honor Congressman Clyburn. The Lecture was established as a mechanism to allow national and regional health disparities researchers, public health researchers, practice professionals, policy makers and community leaders to share their findings, best practices, and lessons learned with students, faculty, and the community, in order to facilitate research and community engagement efforts focused on reducing and eliminating health disparities. Since its inception, the Lecture has been well attended by local government officials, the university’s faculty, staff and students and the community.