International Experts Group

Dr. David R. Williams is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health and Chair, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His prior faculty appointments were at Yale University and the University of Michigan. He holds an MPH from Loma Linda University and a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan. 

The author of more than 500 scientific papers, his research has enhanced our understanding of the ways in which race, socioeconomic status, stress, racism, health behavior and religious involvement can affect physical and mental health. The Everyday Discrimination Scale that he developed is the most widely used measure of discrimination in health studies.  

He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. He has received Distinguished Contribution Awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Psychological Association and the New York Academy of Medicine. He was ranked as the Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences in 2008. In 2014, Thomson Reuters ranked him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.  

He has played a visible, national leadership role in raising awareness levels of inequities in health and interventions to address them. He has served on multiple national advisory committees (including 10 Committees for the National Academy of Sciences), as the staff director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America and as a key scientific advisor to the award-winning PBS film series, Unnatural Causes: Is inequality Making Us Sick? His research has been featured in the national print and television media and in his TED Talk. 

Yvonne commenced nurse training at Central Middlesex Hospital in 1977, qualified as a general nurse in 1980 and then went on to qualify in mental health nursing and health visiting. In 1986 she secured her first NHS management job and has since held a number of operational and strategic leadership posts.

Yvonne has recently retired after 43 years in the NHS. The last role she held was as Director, workforce race equality, NHS London, prior to which she was the Director for the Workforce Race Equality Implementation Team in NHS England/Improvement. She is a member of faculty at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the United States where she helped develop their inclusion strategy. Yvonne has delivered lectures on inclusion and diversity at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She continues to work closely with world expert on health and race Professor D. Williams, of Harvard University School of Public Health.

Andy Burness is founder and president of Burness, a mission-driven global communications firm supporting nonprofits and the people they serve.  Andy and his colleagues have worked in 20 countries and served over 600 organizations, to showcase solutions to the problems that cause poverty, hunger, disease and environmental degradation, often taking little-known ideas that can benefit humanity and developing strategies and tactics for taking these ideas to scale.

His company long worked on issues at the intersection of race and health, partnering with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to translate academic research for public audiences, amplifying the voices of scholars with media and policymakers.

Burness has a robust global practice with a hub office in Nairobi, Kenya. This work focuses on global health, agriculture, environmental sustainability, and other issues of particular concern to the Global South.  Andy and his colleagues work closely with experts native to these countries, sharing their knowledge both in-country and around the world.

Andy has been an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, teaching a course on strategic communications for policy change.  He is also an associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and lectures regularly on practical strategies for influencing a better world.  In 2014, he was selected as a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Fellow, joining 15 other policymakers, nonprofit leaders, artists and public advocates from around the world.

Before starting his firm, he was liaison with the public and primary spokesperson for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Prior to that, he served as public information officer for the President’s Commission on Medical Ethics and was a legislative assistant for health and education policy in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ricci Harris (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Raukawa)  is a Public Health Physician and Associate Professor at the Eru Pōmare Māori Health Research Centre, Department of Public Health, University of Otago Wellington. Her research focuses on Māori (indigenous) health and the investigation and elimination of ethnic health inequities in Aotearoa New Zealand. Areas of research include ethnicity data quality, ethnic disparities in health status and receipt of health services, modelling health interventions for equity, and the impact of social determinants on Māori health and inequities. A major focus of research has been in the area of racism and health. This includes research on the health impacts of experiences of racism on the health and wellbeing of adults and children, the links between multiple experiences of discrimination and health, and racial/ethnic bias among health professionals. 

Stephani is a Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology leading the Health Inequalities Research Group at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She has over 25 years of experience delivering interdisciplinary health inequalities research with an emphasis on race at the intersection of other social identities. She works across sectors, locally and nationally, and has published extensively on: inequalities in mental health and health services; discrimination and other forms of social adversity; community mental health; and multimorbidity. Professor Hatch brings a range of research and leadership experience. From 2008 to 2015, she was Co-Principal Investigator for the NIHR and ESRC-funded Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre South East London Community Health (SELCoH) study, a psychiatric and physical morbidity study set in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

In 2017, she received a Wellcome Trust Investigator’s Award to lead the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services (TIDES) study, a mixed-methods programme of work that expanded in 2020 with ESRC funding to utilise a participatory framework to identify processes through which racial and ethnic inequalities in mental health and occupational outcomes are produced, maintained and resisted in the context of Covid-19. Professor Hatch also currently co-leads the Marginalised Communities and Mental Health programme within the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health focused on advancing research with communities that have often been ignored, to examine and disrupt structures maintaining social inequities in mental health, with an emphasis on race within an intersectionality framework. Professor Hatch integrates collaborative approaches to knowledge production and dissemination, action and outreach in training and research through the Health Inequalities Research Network (HERON), which she founded in 2010. She also leads equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, and has national and international advisory roles in health and volunteer and community sectors

Dr. Raymond Lovett is the Program leader for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Research School of Population Health. Ray is an Aboriginal (Wongaibon/Ngiyampaa) social epidemiologist with extensive experience in health services research, public health policy development and health program evaluation.  

The emphasis of Dr Lovett’s research has involved the integration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture with improving health outcomes and health services. He has an additional focus on administrative and health services data to change policy and practice. 

Dr. Anthony Mbewu is a specialist in internal medicine and cardiology. He was Chief Executive Officer of the South African Government Printing Works from 2012 to 2017 spearheading the launch of South Africa’s electronic “smart ID card”. He also served as the President of the Medical Research Council of South Africa from 2005 to 2010; and Executive Director for Research there from 1996 to 2005. He studied medicine at the Universities of Oxford and London; and trained as a specialist in internal medicine and cardiology in Manchester before returning to South Africa in April 1994 after 27 years in exile. He has a management diploma from Harvard Business School. He was formerly an Honorary Professor in Cardiology and Internal Medicine at the University of Cape Town.  

He sits on the Presidential Specialists’ Advisory Panel; and was an advisor on health research to former President Thabo Mbeki. He chaired the Ministerial National Task Team that prepared the ‘Operational Plan for the Comprehensive Prevention, Treatment and Care of HIV and AIDS in South Africa’ – a plan that has enrolled 5 million South Africans onto antiretroviral treatment since 2004. Prof Mbewu was Co-Chair of the Inter Academy Medical Panel (a body that represents 67 of the world’s Medical Academies); a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Special Programme for Training and Research in Tropical Disease (TDR); and was Vice Chairperson of the Board of the Global TB Alliance. He has served as a Technical Advisor to WHO on numerous occasions. He was a member of one of the World Bank taskteams that prepared the plan for the $1.6 billion Advanced Market Commitments fund to purchase pneumococcal vaccine to prevent childhood pneumonia in low income countries; which is now preventing hundreds of thousands of childhood deaths every year. He was also a member of the adjudication panel that selected the Academic Health Science Centres of the UK. Prof Mbewu has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers in mainly international journals; and presented over 40 papers and posters at national and international research meetings. He is a former Vice-President of the Academy of Science of South Africa; a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK; and was elected as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Medicine of the USA for “an outstanding contribution to health”. 

James is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, founding and Deputy Director of the ESRC Centre of Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), co-PI of the Synergi Collaborative Centre, which is investigating ethnic inequalities in severe mental illness, and founding and co-Director of the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA). Issues of inequality, social justice and underlying processes of stratification have been the primary focus of his research activities, which have centred on ethnicity/race, ageing, gender, and the interrelationships between these. Central to his work on ethnicity/race has been developing an understanding of the links between ethnicity, racism, class and inequality. This work has covered a variety of elements of social disadvantage, how these relate to racialised identities and processes of racism, and how these patterns have changed over time.

He has also explored the role of access to and quality of health services, including a critical examination of mental health services. His research on ageing has been concerned to understand the patterns and determinants of social and health inequalities in ageing populations. He has conducted studies on quality of life for older people among different ethnic groups in the UK, on inequalities in health at older ages, and on routes into retirement and the impact of retirement on health and wellbeing. He was PI of the fRaill programme, an interdisciplinary study of inequalities in later life, and is co-PI of the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA), which is a multi-disciplinary panel study of those aged 50 and older.

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, Maya-K’iche’ journalist, activist, and Stanford University visiting professor from Guatemala.  Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj is an international spokeswoman for Indigenous communities in Central America and was the first Maya-K’iche’ woman to earn a doctorate in social anthropology in Guatemala.  Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj was also instrumental in making racial discrimination illegal in Guatemala and is featured in 500 Years, a documentary about Indigenous resistance movements, for her role as an activist and expert witness in war crime trials. Dr. Nimatuj writes a weekly newspaper column for elPeriódico de Guatemala and has served on UN Women as a representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The fall 2019, she joined the Center for Latin American Studies,CLAS, at Stanford where she teaches courses about Central and Latin American history and resistance. She is part of a long line of struggle and resistance in her community since the Spanish invasion in 1524.  She is the author of the books:  La pequeña Burguesía Comercial de Guatemala: Desigualdades de clasa, raza y género (2003),  Pueblos indígenas, Estado y lucha por tierra en Guatemala: Estrategias de sobrevivencia y negociación ante la desigualdad globalizada (2008), Lunas y Calendarios, colección poesía guatemalteca (2018) and “La Justicia nunca estuvo de nuestro lado” Peritaje cultural sobre conflicto armado y violencia sexual en el caso Sepur Zarco, Guatemala (2019) and with Aileen Ford, Acceso de las Mujeres Indígenas a la tierra, el territorio y lo recursos naturales en América Latina y El Caribe (2018).  In 2020 she was awardee with LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship. 

TBC

Professor Naomi Priest is a lifecourse and social epidemiologist. Naomi is Group Leader of Social-Biological Research at the Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University and an Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.

Her research program is focused on examining how social forces and social exposures become biologically embedded and embodied, and on understanding and addressing inequities in health and development throughout the life course. She is particularly interested in understanding and addressing racism as a fundamental cause of child and youth health and health inequities. Much of this work focuses on inequities in mental health and cardiovascular disease risk for Aboriginal and ethnic minoritised children and adolescents, with inflammation a key mechanism.

Naomi has extensive experience in qualitative, mixed methods, and large-scale quantitative analysis, as well as in the conduct of collaborative research and policy and practice implementation. She originally trained as an occupational therapist and worked in community child health in rural, remote and outer urban areas of South Australia.

Naomi has held a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship and has previously been a Visiting Scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University.

Prof. Reddy is known nationally in South Africa and internationally as making significant contributions to behavioural science in the fight against HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, and adolescent health. Most recently, she served as the Strategic Lead within the Human and Social Capabilities division at the HSRC in South Africa and as the Director of the Health Promotion Research and Development Unit of the South African Medical Research Council (MRC). Prof Reddy has served as an Extraordinary Professor by the University of the Western Cape.  

Prof. Reddy holds an MPH from the University of Massachusetts and a PhD from Maastricht University. She has held many prestigious professional appointments, including President Bush’s PEPFAR Advisory Committee, IOM’s Committee on Antiretroviral Drug Use in Resource-Constrained Settings 2003/2004, and the World Health Organization Health Promotion Glossary Reference Group 2003. She has been the PI for many research projects in South Africa. She was also the local Co-PI in South Africa of an NIH-funded supplement on HIV prevention/intervention targeting prison populations, and a CIFAR grant targeting HIV negative women (SISTA SA). She was appointed to South Africa’s National Health Research Committee by the Minister of Health.  Prof. Reddy was a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), and a member of its governing Council. She has given talks and lectures at many prestigious institutions such as the Academie des Sciences in Paris, the Institute of Medicine, and universities such as Harvard, Emory, Georgetown, and Massachusetts. 

Dr. Smylie is the Director of the Well Living House Action Research Centre for Indigenous Infant, Child, and Family Health and Wellbeing, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Advancing Generative Health Services for Indigenous Populations in Canada, and Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.   Dr. Smylie’s research focuses on addressing Indigenous health inequities in partnership with Indigenous communities. She is particularly focused on ensuring all First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples are counted into health policy and planning wherever they live in ways that make sense to them; addressing anti-Indigenous racism in health services; and advancing community-rooted innovations in health services for Indigenous populations. She maintains a part-time clinical practice at Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto and has practiced and taught family medicine in a variety of Indigenous communities both urban and rural.  A Métis woman, Dr. Smylie acknowledges her family, traditional teachers, and ceremonial lodge.

Laurie Zephyrin MD, MPH, MBA (she/her) is Senior Vice President, Advancing Health Equity, The Commonwealth Fund

launching The Commonwealth Fund’s innovative Advancing Health Equity portfolio. She previously served as Vice President of Health Care Delivery System Reform at The Commonwealth Fund leading the Fund’s work promoting payment and policy reform in primary health care and maternal health care through Medicaid and delivery system transformation. 

Laurie is driven by a commitment and passion to transform health care delivery systems and advance health equity. She combines her experience as a clinician, policy leader, and health systems innovator to her role at The Commonwealth Fund to drive delivery system change. Laurie has extensive experience leading the vision, design, and delivery of innovative health care models across national health systems. She was the first National Director of the Reproductive Health Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs spearheading the strategic vision and leading systems change and policy to improve the health of women veterans nationwide; she served as Acting Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Community Care, and later, as Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Community Care. 

While directing the VA’s Community Care multibillion-dollar program, Dr. Zephyrin spearheaded efforts to implement legislation, develop internal governance structures, and address patient outcomes through system-wide transformation of care delivery. As part of the senior leadership team, she also represented VA before Congress and other internal and external stakeholders. Her perspective and experience as a systems thinker and a leader provides refreshing insight on health care delivery and advancing health equity. She has written numerous articles and has been quoted in the LA Times, National Geographic, the NY Times, STAT and more. Laurie was named a White House Fellow, Young Global Leader, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and Aspen Health Innovator Fellow. 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 is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and completed her residency training at Harvard’s Integrated Residency Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.