Dean's Lecture Series
The Dean’s Lecture Series was initiated in 2019 as part of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Inclusive Excellence Action Plan. The series aims to heighten the visibility of, and our engagement with, major efforts to understand and dismantle racism and other forms of oppression, and to highlight initiatives aimed at creating a healthier, more equitable and just society locally and globally.
Dean’s Lecture Series
Spring 2022
Greg Millett
Gregorio (Greg) Millett, MPH, is a Vice President at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, and the Director of amfAR’s Public Policy Office. He is a former CDC Senior Scientist in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP) and has published in top medical, public health and policy journals. Mr. Millett also served as Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy where he helped author President Obama’s original National HIV/AIDS Strategy and worked to support the Strategy’s implementation across the federal government. In 2020, Mr. Millett was the opening plenary speaker for the International AIDS Conference; he also published the first national research studies assessing the impact of COVID-19 among black and Latino Americans, which received wide national and international media coverage. Mr. Millett serves as a member of the HIV Prevention Trials Network, PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Committee, the COVID-19 Prevention Network, and the CDC/HRSA Advisory Board.
Using data from published studies in the scientific literature, this talk will explore similarities between the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics with respect to inequities by race and ethnicity. Specifically, Millett will discuss lessons that were ignored from the HIV pandemic, such as the degree to which social determinants impact health; the role of multiple overlapping epidemics in amplifying inequities; stigmatization of at-risk communities and victim-blaming that run counter to the prevailing science; and possible solutions to prevent the next pandemic from disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations.
Spring 2021
Pam Fessler, MPA
Journalist, NPR correspondent, author
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Pam Fessler, MPA, is a journalist, NPR correspondent and author of Carville’s Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice. Her book highlights how the U.S. confined leprosy patients through much of the 20th century and how the patients fought against injustice. Fessler will discuss lessons learned from leprosy and parallels we can see in our society today.
Pam Fessler, MPA
Journalist, NPR Correspondent, Author
Fall 2019
Dr. Benjamin Mason Meier
Ben Meier, JD, LLM, PhD
Associate Professor of Global Health Policy, Department of Public Policy
Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health
UNC-Chapel Hill
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Dr. Meier’s research—at the intersection of global health, international law, and public policy— examines and advances human rights-based frameworks for global health policy. He has written and presented extensively on the development, evolution, and implementation of human rights, including Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (Oxford UP, 2018) and a new text (in development) on Foundations of Global Health and Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2020). He is coordinating special issues of Global Health Governance (Global Health Justice and Governance) and the Health & Human Rights Journal (Human Rights for Health across the United Nations). He has served as a consultant to international organizations, national governments and nongovernmental organizations. He received the Outstanding Recent Alumni Award (2017) from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Early Career Award for Excellence in Public Health Law (2018) from the American Public Health Association. Dr. Meier holds a JD and LLM from Cornell Law School and a PhD in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University.
Ben Meier PHD, JD, LLM, Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Associate; Professor in the Department of Public Policy
Dean’s Inclusive Excellence Lecture Series
Spring 2023
Dr. David Williams
Norman Professor of Public Health and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Williams’ presentation provides an overview of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in health. It also describes promising interventions to improve the delivery of medical care, reduce stress and the harmful health effects of exposure to stress on health, as well as to enhance job opportunities, housing and neighborhood conditions that can improve health and eliminate health inequities.
This presentation provides an overview of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in health. It also describes promising interventions to improve the delivery of medical care, reduce stress and the harmful health effects of exposure to stress on health, as well as to enhance job opportunities, housing and neighborhood conditions that can improve health and eliminate health inequities.
Fall 2019
Dr. Chandra Ford
Chandra Ford, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences
Director, Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice and Health
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
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Dr. Ford’s research examines relationships between racism-related factors and disparities in the HIV care continuum and advances conceptual and methodological tools for studying racism’s relationship to health disparities. In 2016, she was named to the National Academy of Medicine Committee on Community-based Solutions to Promote Health Equity in the United States of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and appointed co-chair of the Committee on Science of the American Public Health Association’s Anti-Racism Collaborative. Dr. Ford is an author and editor of the new book Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional. Dr. Ford holds an MLIS and an MPH from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in social medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill and also in Epidemiology at Columbia University, where she was a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Kellogg Health Scholar. Dr. Ford is a Kaiser Permanente Chris Burch Leadership Awardee.
Chandra Ford, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA
