In an effort to remain accountable to communities who have been negatively impacted by past and present medical injustices, the staff at Himmelfarb Library is committed to the work of maintaining an anti-discriminatory practice. We will uplift and highlight diverse stories throughout the year, and not shy away from difficult conversations necessary for health sciences education. To help fulfill this mission, this week’s blog post will cover Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.
Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS was recently appointed to chair the U.S. COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. Dr. Nunez had been previously appointed as co-chair of the Biden-Harris transition team’s COVID-19 Advisory Board. The executive order appointing Dr. Nunez-Smith to the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force identifies the issue that while people of color in the United States are more likely to become sick and die of COVID-19, but incomplete data on underlying health conditions, social factors, and rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality have hampered an equitable response.
Dr. Nunez-Smith grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands and pursued her education at Swarthmore College, Jefferson Medical College, and Yale University. Her understanding of the effects of limited access to health care date to her childhood when her father had a stroke in his 40s as a result of untreated hypertension. The stroke left her father partially paralyzed and Dr. Nunez Smith described the experience in a New York Times profile:
"He was a champion and a fighter. But my memories are of a father who had to live life with this daily reminder of how we had failed in terms of our health care. I don’t want another little girl out there to have her father suffer a stroke that is debilitating and life-altering in that way."
Dr. Nunez-Smith is responsible for an extensive bibliography of research on health promotion and health equity as well as research methods including primary data collection, data management and analysis, qualitative and mixed methods research, and population health. While Dr. Nunez-Smith will remain in her position as Associate Dean for Health Equity Research at Yale University and a board-certified internal medicine physician, it's her work on the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force that is getting much attention.
Dr. Nunez Smith has identified some primary goals of the task force including addressing vaccination as well as equitable access to other healthcare services including testing, contact tracing, and treatment. In a Fortune magazine profile, Dr. Nunez-Smith discussed COVID-19 vaccination in communities of color which are historically underserved:
"It's important for us to acknowledge why there’s this hesitancy. People are going to be skeptical of vaccines, particularly many in communities where there is a not-long-ago history of experimentation, and where there are daily, contemporary reminders of differential status and access. But not every person or group that's skeptical of vaccines has their skepticism rooted in the same things, not even for every person of color who's skeptical. So we need to be thinking about targeted messaging; different people have different questions and motivations, and our response is not one-size-fits-all in terms of the information people need."
