UK Happenings

Achieving Health Equity: Tools for a National Campaign Against Racism is Topic of Upcoming Lecture

Photo of Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD
Epidemiologist Camara Phyllis Jones will present the next installment of the UK College of Medicine Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series, entitled "Achieving Health Equity: Tools for a National Campaign Against Racism."

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 12, 2017) — Epidemiologist Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones will present the next installment of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series, "Achieving Health Equity: Tools for a National Campaign Against Racism."

Jones is research director on social determinants of health and equity for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  She is a family physician and epidemiologist whose work focuses on the impact of racism on the health and well-being of the nation.

She seeks to broaden the national health debate to include not only universal access to high-quality health care but also attention to the social determinants of health including poverty and the social determinants of equity, including racism.

As a methodologist, Jones has developed new ways for comparing full distributions of data — rather than means or proportions — to investigate population-level risk factors and propose population-level interventions. As a social epidemiologist, her work on race-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on race and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss.

The lecture will take place at noon, Thursday, Oct. 5, in the UK Albert B. Chandler Hospital's Pavilion A Auditorium.