UNC School of Public Health - Message from the Special Assistant to the Dean for Diversity

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Special Assistant to the Dean for Diversity

Message from the Special Assistant to the Dean for Diversity

Jessie A. Satia, PhD, MPH

Undoubtedly, the socioeconomic, cultural, racial and ethnic diversity of our communities has a strong impact on health and well-being. All regions of the United States, including North Carolina, are becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse; this diversity is often accompanied by appreciable disparities in health and disease. Socioeconomic and cultural diversity enriches the quality of research, teaching, and practice by expanding ideas, approaches, and perspectives. Therefore, to adequately tackle the considerable challenges associated with addressing and ultimately eliminating health disparities and adequately serving our communities, it is vital that Schools of Public Health faculty, students, and staff be diverse and culturally competent.

For these reasons, among others, the UNC School of Public Health is committed to becoming more diverse in terms of students, faculty, and staff. As stated by Dean Rimer, becoming more diverse will help us become even better teachers, researchers and practitioners as we seek to overcome health-related disparities.

With the idea that when diversity is everyone's business, sadly, it often is nobody's job, Dean Rimer named me as Special Assistant to the Dean for Diversity in January 2006. Since that time, I have undertaken several activities aimed at accomplishing my mandate, ranging from drafting a strategic plan that identifies specific goals, strategies, and measurable criteria for creating a more diverse environment at the School, meeting and working with under-represented minority faculty candidates and recruits in hopes of making their transition to UNC as seamless as possible, to holding meetings with the department chairs to discuss minority faculty and student recruitment and retention, and inviting a diversity consultant to work with leadership on issues related to diversity. Details of these and other initiatives are available upon request.

In my academic capacity, I am Associate Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the School of Public Health and member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. I received my PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology and Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Washington in Seattle. My research is focused on the study of racial/ethnic disparities in colorectal and prostate cancer etiology and survival, with an emphasis on the contribution of diet, supplement use, and other lifestyle factors.

We welcome your thoughts, ideas, questions, and suggestions. Please contact us at sphdiversity@unc.edu or call (919) 966-7234.

Sincerely,

Jessie A. Satia, PhD, MPH
Special Assistant to the Dean for Diversity
Associate Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology
School of Public Health
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Last updated October 02, 2008

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