A new grant will help reduce disparities in healthcare through a unique new training program led by Ruby Mendenhall (GNDP), Associate Professor in Sociology, African American Studies, Urban and Regional Planning, and Social Work and Associate Dean for Diversity and Democratization of Health Innovation at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

The chronic stress of living in neighborhoods with high rates of violence and poverty alters gene activity in immune cells, according to a new study of low-income single Black mothers on the South Side of Chicago.

The study of human genomics is inextricably linked to larger societal practices: how well diversity is represented in those who direct and conduct scientific research, how we balance data access with individual privacy, and the ways we group and describe both healthy and ill people. This September, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) had the privilege of collaborating with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to host a workshop examining these issues.

Ask Ruby Mendenhall about the scope of her activities, and you’re quickly overwhelmed. Ask her to illustrate how they all connect, and you’ll soon have a page full of circles, lines, themes and projects – many of them connecting people you’d think would have little to talk about. Yet they do.

Ruby Mendenhall has been named the assistant dean for diversity and democratization of health innovation at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Mendenhall is also an associate professor of sociology, African American studies, urban and regional planning, gender and women’s studies and social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.