Department of Neurology

Presents

VANESSA NORTHINGTON GAMBLE, MD, PHD

University Professor of Medical Humanities Professor of American Studies Columbian College of Arts and Sciences The George Washington University

For a Grand Round’s webinar entitled:

At the Fault Lines of Racial Inequities: African Americans and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 8am

 Click to access ZOOM Link

Biography:

Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD is University Professor of Medical Humanities at the George Washington University. She is the first woman and first African American to hold this prestigious, endowed faculty position. She is also Professor of Health Policy and American Studies. In addition, she is Adjunct Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Throughout her career Dr. Gamble has worked to promote equity and justice in American medicine and public health. A physician, scholar, and activist, she is an internationally recognized expert on the history of race and American medicine, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, and bioethics. She is the author of several widely acclaimed publications on the history of race and racism in American medicine, including the award-winning Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement: 1920-1945.

Public service has been a hallmark of Dr. Gamble’s career. She chaired the committee that took the lead role in the successful campaign to obtain an apology in 1997 from President Clinton for the infamous United States Public Health Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. She has been appointed to numerous boards and committees including the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Ethics Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, Ibis Reproductive Health, National Caucus and Center on Black Aged, Inc., the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and Hampshire College. She has also served on several editorial boards including that of the American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, and Milbank Quarterly.

Dr. Gamble’s many honors include membership to the National Academy of Medicine and the Alpha Omega Alpha, Honor Medical Society and election as a Fellow of the Hastings Center. She will receive the 2021 Distinguished Graduate Award from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

A proud native of West Philadelphia, Dr. Gamble received her B.A. from Hampshire College and her MD and PhD in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania.