Distinguished Lecture
Chandra L. Ford, PhD, MPH, MLIS | September 29, 2022
Public Health Critical Race Praxis: Perspectives on the Intersection of COVID and Critical Race Theory Heading link
Dr. Chandra Ford presented the UIC School of Public Health Distinguished Lecture for academic year 2022-2023 on September 29, 2022.
Chandra L. Ford is Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice and Health and Professor of Community Health Sciences in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She is lead editor (with Derek Griffith, Marino Bruce and Keon Gilbert) of Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional (APHA Press, 2019), which was named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 by the American Library Association’s Choice magazine. In addition to a master’s of public health, she holds a master’s degree in library and information science, with a concentration in health information. Dr. Ford earned her doctorate in Health Behavior with a minor in Epidemiology from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and completed postdoctoral fellowships in Social Medicine (at UNC School of Medicine) and Epidemiology (at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health), the latter as a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Kellogg Health Scholar.
Her work offers conceptual and methodological tools for studying racism as a public health problem using Public Health Critical Race Praxis, which is a model she co-originated with Collins Airhihenbuwa for applying Critical Race Theory empirically. Her empirical work examines social injustices occurring during the COVID pandemic as well as inequities in HIV testing, care and prognoses, or documents barriers to services among LGBTQ survivors of intimate partner violence. Her work has been published in a wide range of journals, including the American Journal of Public Health, JAIDS, Social Science & Medicine, the Boston University Law Review, Ethnicity & Disease, and other refereed journals.
Dr. Ford has received many teaching awards and several notable honors, including the 2020 Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Black Women Physicians, a TrueHero Award from TruEvolution and the 2019 Paul Cornely Award from the Health Activist Dinner group.
She serves the profession extensively. In 2016, she served on the National Academy of Medicine’s Committee on Community-based Solutions to Promote Health Equity in the United States. She is a longstanding member of the American College of Epidemiology’s Minority Affairs Committee and a former president of the Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues. In addition, she has been involved with the Black Radical Congress and remains involved with the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders.