Daniel E. Dawes, JD
Daniel E. Dawes, JD, is a widely respected healthcare and public health leader, health policy expert, educator, and researcher who serves as Senior Vice President of Global Health Equity and the Executive Director of the Institute of Global Health Equity at Meharry Medical College. Prior to this, he served as Executive Director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute and a Professor of health law, policy, and management at Morehouse School of Medicine. He is the author of two groundbreaking health policy books, 150 Years of ObamaCare and The Political Determinants of Health, both published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Among his many achievements, he was an instrumental figure in developing and negotiating the Mental Health Parity Act, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, and the Affordable Care Act’s health equity-focused provisions, among other landmark federal policies, as well as the principal investigator for the nation’s first health equity tracker, co-founder of the Health Equity Leadership and Exchange Network (HELEN), and a principal investigator of the HHS National COVID-19 Resiliency Network.
Dr. Gregg L. Semenza
Dr. Gregg L. Semenza is a professor of genetic medicine, pediatrics, radiation oncology, and molecular radiation sciences, biological chemistry, medicine, and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Semenza is the C. Michael Armstrong Professor and serves as the director of the vascular program at the Institute for Cell Engineering. One of today’s preeminent researchers on the molecular mechanisms of oxygen regulation, Dr. Semenza has led the field in uncovering how cells adapt to changing oxygen levels. Dr. Semenza was recognized for this groundbreaking research in 2019, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with William G. Kaelin, Jr., M.D. of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Peter J. Ratcliffe of Oxford University.
Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers
Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers was named Director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)–one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)–on April 1, 2007. He had served as NIDDK’s Acting Director since March 2006 and had been the Institute’s Deputy Director since January 2001.As a research investigator, Dr. Rodgers is widely recognized for his contributions to the development of the first effective—and FDA approved—therapy for sickle cell anemia. In addition, he and his collaborators have reported on a modified blood stem-cell transplant regimen that is highly effective in reversing sickle cell disease in adults and is associated with relatively low toxicity.
Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD
Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD was appointed the 16th Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate. He was sworn in on August 17, 2009. On June 6, 2017, President Donald Trump announced his selection of Dr. Collins to continue to serve as the NIH Director. In this role, Dr. Collins oversees the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, spanning the spectrum from basic to clinical research.
Dr. Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. He served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH from 1993-2008.
Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH, FACP
Dr. Lisa Cooper is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine, and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Health Equity at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. A general internist and social epidemiologist, Dr. Cooper was one of the first scientists to document disparities in the quality of relationships between physicians and patients from socially at-risk groups. She then designed innovative interventions targeting physicians’ communication skills, patients’ self-management skills, and healthcare organizations’ ability to address the needs of populations experiencing health disparities.
Currently, Dr. Cooper directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity (formerly the Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Health Disparities), where she and her team work with stakeholders from healthcare and the community to implement rigorous clinical trials, identifying interventions that alleviate racial and income disparities in social determinants and health outcomes. The Center also provides training to a new generation of scholars.
Damon Tweedy
Damon Tweedy, MD is a 2000 graduate of Duke University School of Medicine and subsequently graduated from Yale Law School in 2003 before returning to Duke to complete his medical and psychiatric training in 2007. He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and staff physician at the Durham Veteran Affairs Medical Center. Dr. Tweedy has published articles about race and medicine in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and The Annals of Internal Medicine. His columns and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and other print publications. His recently published book: “Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine” explores the intersection of race and medicine through the lens of his experience as a medical student, medical intern, and psychiatry resident. The book was a New York Times Bestseller and was selected by TIME magazine as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2015. He lives outside Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with his family.
Ruha Benjamin
Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American studies at Princeton University where she specializes in the interdisciplinary study of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and social inequity. She is the author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press 2013). Professor Benjamin received her BA in sociology and anthropology from Spelman College, MA and PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics and Harvard University’s Science, Technology, and Society Program. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Institute for Advanced Study.
Dorothy Roberts
Dorothy Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. She is also Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, she has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics. Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, was published in July 2011. Roberts is also Chair of the Board of Directors of the Black Women’s Health Imperative.
Gary H. Gibbons, MD
Gary H. Gibbons, M.D., is the Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Before joining the NHLBI, Gibbons served as the founding director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute, chairperson of the Department of Physiology, and professor of physiology and medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine, in Atlanta. Throughout his career, Gibbons has received numerous honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences; selection as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Minority Faculty Development Awardee; selection as a Pew Foundation Biomedical Scholar; and recognition as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association (AHA).
David Ewing Duncan
David Ewing Duncan is an award winning science journalist and the bestselling author of eight books, including Experimental Man, Masterminds, and When I’m 164. He is dedicated to exploring leading-edge science and technology, and its consequences in the present and in the future. Duncan agreed to be the first ever human tested for virtually all high tech tests available—genetic, environmental, neural and body. In his bestselling book, Experimental Man, Duncan puts every aspect of his physical makeup under the microscope. His mission is to discover what the most advanced medical technology can tell him, and us, about our future health; the effects of living in a toxin filled world; and how genes, proteins, personal behavior, and an often hostile environment interact within our bodies.
Harriet Washington
Harriet Washington is an award-winning medical writer and editor, and the author of the best-selling book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Ms. Washington’s work focuses on bioethics, the history of medicine, the commodification of medical advancement, African American health issues, and the intersection of medicine, ethics, and culture. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of popular and academic publications, including Health, Psychology Today, Nature, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and the New England Journal of Medicine. She is the founding editor of The Harvard Journal of Minority Public Health.
Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca Skloot is the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She has a B.S. in biological sciences and an MFA in creative nonfiction. Before becoming a science writer, Skloot spent more than a decade working as a veterinary technician in animal shelters, vet clinics, emergency rooms, shelters, research labs, and an animal morgue. She specializes in narrative science writing and has explored a wide range of topics, including goldfish surgery, tissue ownership rights, race and medicine, food politics, and packs of wild dogs in Manhattan. She has taught creative writing and science journalism at the University of California Berkeley, New York University, University of Memphis, and the University of Pittsburgh. Skloot is the founder and president of The Henrietta Lacks Foundation.
