New Faculty Members bring Expertise in Racism

The Yale School of Public Health is welcoming two new faculty members who bring strong expertise in racism and health.

Assistant Professor Ijeoma Opara (above, left), Ph.D., M.P.H., examines how sociocultural factors such as systemic racism influence substance use and sexual health among Black and Latinx youths. At Yale, she will use community participatory approaches to develop interventions that foster racial pride and empowerment, particularly for Black girls.

Opara’s research has already received national recognition: In 2020, she became the first social worker to receive the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award—and a $1.84 million grant to continue her work over five years. Opara is also working to develop a course on Community-based Participatory Research for the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) and the U.S. Health Justice Concentration. She joined the school and SBS in July.

Chelsey Carter (above, right), a joint M.P.H.-Ph.D. candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, will start next year, also in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. She will bring extensive research experience in the intersection of race, class, gender and chronic disease. Her dissertation, rooted in decolonizing and Black feminist methodologies, used 24 months of ethnographic research in post-Ferguson St. Louis to examine how epistemological biases around amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are generated and sustained in scientific research, in public awareness campaigns and among people living with ALS.

Carter is spending the 2021–22 academic year as a Presidential Fellow at Princeton University, where she will develop a book project based on her dissertation and build anti-racism initiatives in the Center on Transnational Policing. At Yale, she will have a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology.

The new faculty are among the latest efforts by the Social and Behavioral Sciences’ broad push to develop interdisciplinary solutions to racism and to promote health equity. The department launched its search for new faculty members to deepen its existing focus on social justice and structural determinants of health, as well as augment its new concentration on U.S. Health and Justice.

“We are ecstatic to have these two extraordinary scholars to join the SBS family and continue our mission to build SBS to be a leading force for social justice and health equity,” said Professor Trace Kershaw, Ph.D., SBS chair. “The focus on racism as a fundamental determinant of health is a top priority.”