Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD, an internationally recognized advocate for equity and justice in American medicine and public health, will deliver the next Discovery Lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 18, in 208 Light Hall.
Gamble is University Professor of Medical Humanities at George Washington University in Washington, D.C, the first woman and first African American to hold the endowed faculty position.
An expert on the history of race and American medicine, health equity and bioethics, she chaired the committee that led the campaign to obtain an apology from President Bill Clinton in 1997 for the now-infamous study of untreated syphilis conducted by federal health officials in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Her lecture, titled “Racial differences in disease: the history of a flawed concept in medicine,” will address the historical roots of racial inequities in health care from the 1793 yellow fever epidemic to the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the country four years ago.
Gamble also is professor of Health Policy and Medicine at George Washington, and adjunct professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her MD and PhD in the history and sociology of science.
She is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society, the National Council on the Humanities, and the National Academy of Medicine.
Her lecture, which will also be livestreamed, is sponsored by the Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program. For a link to the livestream and to access previous Discovery Lectures, go to https://www.vumc.org/discovery-lectures/upcoming-lectures.