Camara  Jones

Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD is a family physician, epidemiologist, and Past President of the American Public Health Association whose work focuses on naming, measuring, and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the United States and the world.

Dr. Jones is currently a Commissioner on the three-year O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health.  She is also a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, an Adjunct Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine.

Dr. Jones taught six years as an Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health (1994-2000), developing the school’s first course on “Race” and Racism, and served fourteen years as a Medical Officer at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2000-2014), leading the development of the six-question Reactions to “Race” module for use on CDC’s surveillance systems.

As President of the American Public Health Association (2016), she launched the association on a National Campaign Against Racism with three tasks:  name racism, ask “How is racism operating here?”, and organize and strategize to act.  Her presidential initiative catalyzed the first of what are now 265 declarations that “Racism is a public health crisis” by local jurisdictions (city councils, county commissions, state legislatures, other bodies) across 42 US states and the District of Columbia.

She has recently shared her expertise on "race", racism, and anti-racism through extended residencies as a Radcliffe Fellow, Harvard University (2019-2020); Presidential Visiting Fellow, Yale School of Medicine (2021); Presidential Chair, University of California, San Francisco (2021-2022); and Leverhulme Visiting Professor in Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London (2022-2023).

Dr. Jones is a public health leader valued for her creativity and intellectual agility.

As a methodologist, she has developed a system of new statistical methods for the pairwise comparison of full distributions of data, rather than the simple comparison of means or proportions, in order to investigate population-level risk factors and propose population-level interventions.

As a social epidemiologist, her work on "race"-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond simply documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences by asking the question “How is racism operating here?”, understanding that the who?, what?, when?, where?, how?, and why? of decision-making are the mechanisms of structural racism.

As a teacher, her allegories on "race" and racism are celebrated for illuminating topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss:  that racism exists, racism is a system, racism saps the strength of the whole society, and we can act to dismantle racism.

Dr. Jones is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine “for contributing novel insights about the epidemiology of health disparities related to racial classifications—she is the preeminent spokesperson on pathways linking racism to poor health outcomes by using innovative, powerful allegories to enable inclusive dialogue and catalyze collective action on this critical public health issue.”

She is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and an honorary member of the Royal Society for Public Health.

Her many other honors include:

• Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award (2023), conferred by the CDC Foundation “for her exceptional ability to educate about pathways linking racism to poor health outcomes and to advocate powerfully and creatively to promote transformative solutions”

• President’s Award for the Advancement of the Common Good (2022), conferred by Stanford University “for her profound empathy, tireless dedication, and extraordinary leadership in a lifetime of research and advocacy; and for advocating, in ways big and small, for systemic change to address the impact of racism and build a healthier future for all; and for transforming and improving the medical and public health communities’ efforts to understand and address the impact of racism and social inequities on health; and for crystallizing complex and difficult issues into clear frameworks that enable open discussion and real progress”

• National Medical Association’s Scroll of Merit (2022), the association’s highest award, “in recognition of her lifelong career as a family physician, educator, epidemiologist, and exemplary leader; and whose allegories on racism have laid the foundation for the efforts to eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity”

• Chanchlani Global Health Research Award (2019), conferred by McMaster University as “a Canadian health sciences award that recognizes a world leading scholar in the area of Global Health”

• Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award (2018), the college’s highest award, which “recognizes alumnae who have brought honor to themselves and to Wellesley College through their outstanding achievements”

• John Snow Award (2011), awarded jointly by the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association and the Royal Society for Public Health in recognition of “enduring contributions to public health through epidemiologic methods and practice”

• Awards named after luminaries David Satcher (2003), Hildrus A. Poindexter (2009), Paul Cornely (2016), Shirley Nathan Pulliam (2016), Louis Stokes (2018), Frances Borden-Hubbard (2018), Cato T. Laurencin (2018), Wyatt Tee and Theresa Ann Walker (2021), Daniel Blumenthal (2023), and Ralph Bunche (2023)

Lauded for her compelling clarity on issues of “race” and racism, she has delivered 17 Commencement Addresses at schools of medicine, schools of public health, and undergraduate institutions since 2013.  She has also been awarded four honorary doctorates:  Doctor of Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2016); Doctor of Science, State University of New York (2021); Doctor of Science, Georgetown University School of Health (2023); and Doctor of Humane Letters, Smith College (2023)

Her counsel has been sought on many advisory bodies, including most recently the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)’s Committee on Advancing Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations; the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health; the National Board of Public Health Examiners; and the Board of Directors of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Outside the United States, her extended formative experiences in the Philippines (1976-1977), Venezuela (1978), England (1980), Liberia (1982), and New Zealand (1999) and her ongoing participation in international fora (including in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, England, Mexico, New Zealand, Rwanda, Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States) have led her to recognize the fundamental importance of addressing systems of structured inequity across the globe.

Dr. Jones earned her BA in Molecular Biology from Wellesley College, her MD from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and both her Master of Public Health and her PhD in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.  She also completed residency training in General Preventive Medicine (Johns Hopkins) and in Family Medicine (Residency Program in Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center).