Health Equity Visiting Professors

Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science at the UT School of Public Health

April 2024

Melissa Valerio, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science at the UT School of Public Health, San Antonio Regional Campus. She spent five years prior as Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Valerio served as PI on studies focused on the design and evaluation of innovative functional health literacy related interventions and strategies to promote disease management (type 2 diabetes, asthma, and oral health) and prevention (type 2 diabetes). She serves as PI on a NINR funded R21 study to develop a measure of verbal functional health literacy. She obtained her master’s degree in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and her Ph.D. in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan.

Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto

May 2023

Heather Ross CM, MD, DSc, MHSc, FRCP (C), FACC is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Head of the Division of Cardiology at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. She received the Order of Canada in 2020 (CM), and an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) from Queen’s University 2021. She is the site lead for the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research and holds the Loretta A. Rogers Chair in Heart Function and the Pfizer Chair in Cardiovascular Research. She received her medical degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada, cardiology training at Dalhousie University, and postdoctoral fellowship in Cardiac Transplantation at Stanford University, California. She earned her master's degree in Bioethics from the University of Toronto. She has won numerous awards including Inventor of the year (UHN 2022), the inaugural CCS Women in Cardiovascular Medicine/Science Mentorship Award (2020) and the Canadian Heart Failure Society Annual Achievement Award (2019).

Associate Professor of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health

May 2023

Zoé Hendrickson, Ph.D., (she/her) is a social scientist whose research centers on how social structures are implicated in everyday experiences of health and how people seek care. With a focus on sexual and reproductive health in an increasingly mobile, globalized world, her research investigates relationships between geographic mobility, gender inequity, and other social determinants of health and the implications these may have on reproductive decision-making, family planning practices, and healthcare seeking. She serves as Director of the MPH/PhD joint anthropology degree program. She earned her Ph.D. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and her B.A. in Biology and Sociology/Anthropology from Swarthmore College.

Professor, Population Health & Medicine & Chief, Division of Health & Behavior, New York University

April 2023

Gbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH is the inaugural and founding director of the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity (IEHE) at NYU Langone Health. He is the Dr. Adolph & Margaret Berger Professor of Medicine and Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He has led numerous NIH-funded studies for cardiovascular disease risk reduction with a focus on developing and evaluating clinic-community linkage models of care to address inequities in health outcomes. Dr. Ogedegbe is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the United States Prevention Services Task Force (USPSTF). After obtaining his MD degree in Ukraine, Dr. Ogedegbe completed his residency in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, followed by a fellowship training in Health Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology at Cornell University, during which received his MPH from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Senior Vice President for Advancing Health Equity, Commonwealth Fund

March 2023

Laurie C. Zephyrin, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., is senior vice president for Advancing Health Equity at the Commonwealth Fund. She has extensive experience leading the vision, design, and delivery of innovative health care models across national health systems. Previously, she was the first national director of the Reproductive Health Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She served as acting assistant deputy undersecretary for Health for Community Care, and later as acting deputy undersecretary for Health for Community Care. She is a clinical assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at NYU Langone School of Medicine (2013–present) and was previously an assistant professor at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons (2007–2012). She earned her M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine, M.B.A. and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University, and B.S. in Biomedical Sciences from the City College of New York. She completed her residency training at Harvard’s Integrated Residency Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Chief Health Equity Officer and Senior Vice President for the American Medical Association

February 2023

Aletha Maybank, M.D., M.P.H. currently serves as the Chief Health Equity Officer and Senior Vice President for the American Medical Association (AMA) where she focuses on embedding health equity across all the work of the AMA and leading its Center for Health Equity. She joined the AMA in April 2019 as the association's inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer to launch AMA’s Center for Health Equity. Prior to this, Dr. Maybank served as the founding Deputy Commissioner for the Center for Health Equity at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Maybank holds a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.D. from Temple University School of Medicine, and an M.P.H. from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is a pediatrician and preventive medicine/public health physician.

Senior Vice President & Executive Director, Global Health, Meharry Medical College

January 2023

Attorney Daniel E. Dawes, J.D., is a nationally recognized leader in the health equity movement and has led numerous efforts to address health policy issues impacting vulnerable, underserved, and marginalized populations. He is a health care attorney and administrator and Founding Dean of the School of Global Health and Senior Vice President of Global Health at Meharry Medical College. Professor Dawes is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and an elected fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. He served as an advisor to The White House COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, an appointed member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee to the Director, and an appointed member of the NIH's National Advisory Council for Nursing Research. Professor Daniel Dawes holds his J.D. with a concentration in Health Law and Labor/Employment Law from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Senior VP/Senior Assoc. Dean, Health Equity & Inclusive Excellence; Assoc. Director, Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical & Translational Science

January 2023

Consuelo H. Wilkins, MD, MSCI, is a Professor of Medicine and Senior Vice President and Senior Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is a nationally recognized physician-scientist leader in health equity research focused on integrating social, cultural and environmental factors into clinical and translational research. She serves as a Principal Investigator of three NIH-funded centers: the Vanderbilt-Miami-Meharry Center of Excellence in Precision Medicine and Population Health; the Center for Improving Clinical Trial Education Recruitment and Enrollment at CTSA Hubs; and the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Dr. Wilkins earned a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Doctorate in Medicine from Howard University and a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation from Washington University in St. Louis. She completed Internal Medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center and a Geriatrics fellowship at Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University Medical Center.

Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Brooklyn Neighborhood Health, NYC Dept of Health

October 2022

Zahirah McNatt, Dr.PH. M.H.S.A., is the Godley-St. Goar Chair of the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine and Assistant Professor at the University of Global Health Equity. She also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University. Dr. McNatt has been a consultant in the areas of global health, humanitarian systems, education in emergencies and human rights. McNatt has more than 13 years of experience in the Middle East, East Africa, the Americas & Southeast Asia, working on health systems strengthening in partnership with governments and research in humanitarian settings. Dr. McNatt was awarded the John and Kathleen Gorman Public Health Humanitarian Award in 2017. Zahirah has a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.H.S.A. from the University of Michigan, School of Public Health, and a Dr.PH. from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UT Austin; Executive Director, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health

October 2022

Octavio N. Martinez Jr., M.D., MPH, is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He is also the Executive Director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and Senior Associate Vice President of The University of Texas at Austin Division of Campus and Community Engagement. He is a clinical professor in the U.T. Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work; faculty affiliate with the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice in the School of Law and an adjunct professor at UT Health San Antonio/Long School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Martinez is licensed to practice medicine in Texas and North Carolina and is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Octavio Martinez earned his M.D. at the Baylor College of Medicine, M.P.H. from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Master of Business Administration at the University of Texas at Austin, and Bachelor of Business Administration at the University of Texas at Austin.

January-June 2021

Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD is a family physician, epidemiologist, and past president of the American Public Health Association whose work focuses on naming, measuring, and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the United States and the world. Dr. Jones completed a one-year appointment as a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She spent six years at the Harvard School of Public Health, served fourteen years at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was a 2019-2020 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University, a 2021 Presidential Visiting Fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, and the 2021-2022 Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Francisco. She also continues as an Adjunct Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and as a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine.