Last June, Marcella Nunez-Smith was a featured faculty member on an ISPS Zoom event to recruit student researchers for projects related to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, she was part of a Yale team conducting surveys in the African American community about COVID-19. They were gathering information about knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, financial hardships, food security, the role of government, and trust in our institutions as they worked to develop a roadmap for reopening the state of Connecticut. Dr. Nunez-Smith, an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Public Health, and Management, was also serving as the inaugural Associate Dean for Health Equity Research and as the Founding Director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC) at the Yale School of Medicine.
Now Dr. Nunez-Smith has been chosen to lead a new White House task force dedicated to health equity in the Biden-Harris administration. As one of the nation’s foremost experts on disparities in healthcare access, she will work to ensure that the response, care, and treatment for COVID-19 is distributed equally, especially among populations of color who have borne an unequal burden during the pandemic. She also serves as a co-chair of the President-elect’s COVID-19 advisory board.
Read the full story by Brita Belli in YaleNews (December 8, 2020).