Gina Lovasi Appointed Interim Dean of the Dornsife School of Public Health

This message was shared with all faculty, students and staff on June 13, 2023. 

Dear Students and Colleagues,

As Dean Ana Diez Roux, MD, MPH, prepares to step down as the Dana and David Dornsife Dean of the Dornsife School of Public Health to continue and expand her work as a faculty member, I am pleased to announce that Gina Lovasi, PhD, MPH, will be appointed interim dean as of September 1.

Dr. Lovasi is associate dean for education, Dornsife Associate Professor of Urban Health and the former co-director of the Urban Health Collaborative. Her research agenda draws on both large datasets and local systematic data collection to address urban health challenges around health disparities, cardiovascular disease and geographic environments. Her work on the health relevance of retail establishments, policies to improve air quality, and urban trees and greenspaces has been widely cited in policy documents in the U.S. and globally. For this work, she has been awarded more than $5.3 million in external funding as principal investigator (PI) or multiple principal investigator while at Drexel, including her current NIA-funded project “Communities Designed to Support Cardiovascular Health for Older Adults.” She has also played key collaborative roles, such as Co-PI for a recent $12M grant from the Wellcome Trust for the project “What Makes Cities Healthy, Equitable, and Environmentally Sustainable? Lessons From Latin America.”

In addition to publishing over 140 peer-reviewed articles, Dr. Lovasi is coeditor of the book “Urban Public Health: A Research Toolkit for Practice and Impact” (Oxford University Press, 2020) and codirector of the Global Alliance for Training in Health Equity Research (GATHER), a training grant funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. She is a frequent mentor and instructor of epidemiology and urban health methods to graduate students working toward MPH and PhD degrees.

I am grateful to Dr. Lovasi for stepping into this leadership role amid the search for the permanent Dana and David Dornsife Dean, which is well underway. Please join me in congratulating and welcoming Dr. Lovasi to her new role!

Sincerely,

Paul E. Jensen
Executive Vice President
Nina Henderson Provost