Diverse and Inclusive Epidemiology Award

The Sherman A. James Diverse and Inclusive Epidemiology Award will recognize an individual who has demonstrated research, teaching or service that expands the scope of the field to under-represented or disadvantaged populations or researchers, and with an impact that has facilitated greater diversity and inclusiveness.

Eligibility

Core criteria for selection include interdisciplinary contributions or leadership to diversity and inclusion related efforts. This could include research, policy, community engagement, public health practice, program development, teaching and/or mentorship.

Candidates must be a member of SER at any career stage. Epidemiologists in academia, government and the private sector are eligible. Candidates must be nominated by at least one SER member. Self-nomination will not be accepted. Multiple nominations do not increase the likelihood of being awarded. In the case of multiple nominations for a single candidate, submitters will be contacted to coordinate a joint nomination.

Requirements

Brief statement (no more than 500 words) of the candidates contribution to and leadership in diversity and inclusion related efforts. This could include research, policy, community engagement, public health practice, program development, teaching and/or mentorship. Statements should focus on the candidates Impact on diversity and inclusiveness.

Finalists will be notified by mid-February when they will be asked to provide two letters of support from colleagues. The letters of support should outline candidates contributions to and leadership in diversity and inclusion efforts. The letter should specify the body of work as well as specific details relating to the contribution(s). At least one letter should come from a person or group that has been impacted by the candidate’s efforts. A maximum of two single-spaced pages will be accepted.

Award Details

The award winner will receive a cash award of $5000, which will be presented at SER’s annual meeting, held in June of each year.

Sherman A. James was born in Hartsville, SC, in 1943. He received his A.B. (Psychology and Philosophy) in 1964 from Talladega College (AL). After service as a commissioned officer (1965-1969) in the US Air Force, he pursued graduate study in social psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, earning the PhD in 1973. James joined the faculty of the Department of Epidemiology at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1973. Under the tutelage of John Cassel and Herman (Al) Tyroler, he became a social epidemiologist focusing on the role of chronic exposure to adverse social conditions in the epidemic of hypertension and related diseases among Black Americans. He is best known for originating the John Henryism hypothesis which posits that repeated, high-effort coping (John Henryism) with systemic adversity – poverty and racial discrimination – accelerates physiological wear and tear on the cardiovascular system of Black Americans fueling the early onset of hypertension.

Dr. James taught at the University of Michigan from 1989-2003 where, as a professor of epidemiology, he taught the school-wide Introduction to Epidemiology course for non-majors, a yearly seminar in social epidemiology, chaired 17 doctoral dissertation committees, and from 1993-1998, served as the School’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. In 1998, he was appointed the John P. Kirscht Collegiate Professor of Public Health, Chair of the Department of Health Behavior, and Founding Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH) whose mission, as the first Center of its kind in any US School of Public Health, was to promote the development of new paradigms for public health research in an increasingly diverse America.

After 14 years at Michigan, Dr. James joined the faculty at Duke University in 2003, where he was the Susan B. King Distinguished Professor of Public Policy. There, he continued his investigative and intervention research on racial and ethnic health disparities and introduced new courses on population health disparities into the public policy curriculum that attracted Duke graduate students in public policy, sociology, and medicine, as well as public health students from UNC-Chapel Hill. After 41 years of full-time teaching, he became a professor emeritus at Duke in 2014, but taught an additional two years, part-time, at Emory University as a Research Professor of Epidemiology.

Dr. James is a past associate editor of Ethnicity & Disease and the American Journal of Public Health. Currently, he serves on the editorial board of Social Science and Medicine- Population Health. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Heart Association, the American College of Epidemiology, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. From SER, he received the John Cassel Lecture and Award (2013), and the Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award (2019). From APHA, he received the Abraham Lilienfeld Teaching Award (2001), and the Wade Hampton Frost Award (2016). In 2007-2008, he served as president of SER.

Dr. James is the proud father of two sons, a step-daughter, and 8 grandchildren.

2025

Eric Rubenstein
Eric Rubenstein, PhD, ScM is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. His work is focused on improving the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), including Down syndrome (DS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Epidemiology, the science of public health, is the crucial tool that can help reach the ultimate goal of improving health and well-being for the population with IDD. That work cannot be done without input and collaboration from the IDD community, which motivates and drives the work to be impactful and translatable

2024

Brittany Charlton
Dr. Brittany Charlton is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in the Department of Population Medicine and at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology. The focus of Dr. Charlton’s research is on health inequities among sexual and gender minorities, particularly related to reproductive health and cancer. The second focal area of her research is contraception use and family planning among people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Her research has sustained continuous funding for the last decade from the NIH and foundations, including the American Cancer Society. She has been the Principal Investigator on 18 grants, including her most recent NIH-funded R01 award, focused on sexual orientation-related disparities in obstetrical and perinatal health. Additionally, she collaborates with colleagues across the globe on a host of large-scale studies. Dr. Charlton has published over 75 original research papers including in JAMA, BMJ, and the American Journal of Public Health.

2023

Sharrelle Barber
Dr. Sharrelle Barber is a social epidemiologist and scholar-activist whose research focuses on the
intersection of “place, race, and health” and examines the role of structural racism in shaping health and racial/ethnic health inequities among Black communities in the United States and Brazil.
Through her empirical work, she seeks to document how racism becomes “embodied” through the neighborhood context and how this fundamental structural determinant of racial health inequities can be leveraged for transformative change to advance anti-racism solutions

2022

Lorraine Dean
Dr. Dean is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As a social epidemiologist, her work focuses on privilege and health, including social (racism, discrimination, social capital) and economic (consumer credit, socioeconomic position) determinants of disparities in cancer and HIV. She has led several studies in this area as PI of NIH and Center for AIDS Research grants. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in Social Epidemiology from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Her early career opportunities as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, which she completed in 2003 as a first-generation under-represented minority college student, paved the way to a year in Venezuela conducting breast cancer research under the J. William Fulbright Program. Prior to her time on faculty, she coordinated over $14 million of activities in both State- and federally-funded tobacco control initiatives in Philadelphia which led to a reduction in smoking for 25,000 residents. Thus, her research is inspired by building the evidence-base on which policies are made for those at risk of chronic disease.

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