2023 Diverse and Inclusive award Winner
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.
Dr. Barber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. Read more
2022 Diverse and Inclusive award Winner
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.