Exploring Social Determinants of Health Equity and Levels of Racism with Dr. Camara Jones
September 25 Presentation and Discussion
Alameda County Public Health Department had the great honor of convening a presentation and discussion with Dr. Camara Jones and our staff, residents and partners. The presentation and several articles from Dr. Jones are below, as well as more information about her and her work.
Presentation Slides
Articles
- Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale
Camara Jones. American Journal of Public Health. (2000) - Using "Socially Assigned Race" to Probe White Advantages in Health Status
Camara Jones, Benedict Truman, Laurie Elam-Evans, Clara Jones, Ruth Jiles, Susan Rumisha, and Geraldine S. Perry. Ethnicity & Disease, Volume 18, (2008).
More about Dr. Camara Jones
Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD is Research Director on Social Determinants of Health and Equity in the Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Jones is a family physician and epidemiologist whose work focuses on the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation. She seeks to broaden the national health debate to include not only universal access to high quality health care but also attention to the social determinants of health (including poverty) and the social determinants of equity (including racism).
As a methodologist, she has developed new methods for comparing full distributions of data (rather than means or proportions) in order to investigate population-level risk factors and propose population-level interventions. As a social epidemiologist, her work on "race"-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on "race" and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss. She hopes through her work to initiate a national conversation on racism that will eventually lead to a National Campaign Against Racism.
Dr. Jones was an Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1994 to 2000, and is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at both the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Rollins School of Public Health. She is an inaugural member of the National Board of Public Health Examiners, and recently completed service on the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association, the Board of Directors of the American College of Epidemiology, and the Board of Directors of the National Black Women’s Health Project.
Dr. Jones received her BA (Molecular Biology) from Wellesley College, her MD from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and her Master of Public Health and PhD (Epidemiology) from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. She also completed residency training in General Preventive Medicine (Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland) and in Family Practice (Residency Program in Social Medicine, Bronx, New York).