A Yale medical school associate professor deeply engaged in exploring inequities in health has been examining the disparate impact of Covid-19 on the Black community is reported to be in line to co-chair President-Elect Joe Biden’s working group on the coronavirus.
CNN reports that Biden is expect Monday to name the professor, Marcella Nunez-Smith, one of three co-chairs of the task force.
Nunez-Smith’s Yale bio describes her work as “promoting health and healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations with an emphasis on supporting healthcare workforce diversity and development, developing patient reported measurements of healthcare quality, and identifying regional strategies to reduce the global burden of non-communicable diseases.”
Nunez-Smith wears many hats at the medical school. Among her roles: associate professor of medicine and of epidemiology (focusing on chronic diseases); a faculty representative to the Council of Faculty and Academic Societies; co-chair of the medical school’s Steering Committee on Community Projects; academic advisor to med students; director of the Center for Community Engagement and Health Equity; founding director of the medical school’s Equity Research and Innovation Center; director of the Center for Research Engagement. That’s only a partial list; read more about her work here.
Click here to read an Independent story about work she did along with other medical school docs and the NAACP on local efforts to explore the pandemic’s impact on the Black community.
Biden has vowed to addressing the pandemic his first top order of business.

