Diggs appointed Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina

February 19, 2021

Pamela Diggs

Pam Diggs, MPH, has been named Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC).

In this role, she will guide implementation of the company’s programs and learning initiatives to increase cultural awareness within the workforce. She will also work to foster change, create dialogue, and build excitement around DEI at Blue Cross NC and develop a roadmap to achieve these goals.

“I am proud to continue to serve at an organization that has built a culture of diversity and am excited about working together across Blue Cross NC’s enterprise to further embed DEI in our DNA,” said Diggs. “Our challenge now as North Carolina’s largest health insurer is to ensure that every employee, customer and community experiences their best opportunity for optimal health, well-being and safety.”

According to Diggs, the three foci that guide her life’s work are public health, which she developed a passion for at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, DEI and servant leadership. These same “passion points” will serve as the basis for her work in this new role.

“My focus is to drive equitable community health solutions and company policies through our internal DEI Council,” she said. “We’re navigating change unlike anything many of us have ever experienced before, from a global pandemic to racism as a long-standing public health crisis. That’s why we’re leveling up our DEI journey right now. While we’ve done great work since standing up our Diversity Office more than ten years ago, we’re holding ourselves to the highest possible standards and working to ensure our actions make DEI an even higher priority. We won’t stop until health care is better for all.”

Diggs – who earned a Master of Public Health degree from the School’s Department of Health Behavior –  continues to stay involved and give back to the Gillings School – by her charitable giving and her service on the School’s Alumni Association Advisory Board, where she draws both on her professional expertise and passion to engage alumni and support the School’s mission.

“In a short time, the Alumni Association has made significant commitments to support our School’s inclusive excellence goals,” she said. “We’ve started an Alumni Inclusive Excellence Committee, successfully helped achieve fundraising goals during an extremely challenging year while increasing commitments to equity, and we’ve re-committed to fostering meaningful connections with students of color and our Minority Student Caucus founders. While we must continue having courageous conversations, we need action and accountability to make an impact. For both roles, I’m most passionate about the impacts we can make together to improve the health and well-being of our communities.”

Though Diggs attended UNC as an undergraduate student, she wasn’t introduced to the field of public health until after graduation, but she was immediately drawn in by its focus on population health and prevention.

“As the daughter of two cancer survivors, I’m drawn to work that advances health equity, addresses the root causes of avoidable differences in health and centers the voices of those closest to the solutions,” she said.

In her prior role within Community Engagement and Marketing Activation, Diggs served as a Program Manager on Blue Cross NC’s Community and Diversity Engagement team. Before joining Blue Cross NC, she served as Director of Programs and Racial Equity at Youth Empowered Solutions, where she ensured that the perspectives of staff members informed the organization’s programs and developed programs to improve organizational understanding of racial equity and promote inclusion.

Visit the Alumni section of the Gillings School website to more about the Alumni Association or Advisory Board.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.