Sharrelle Barber, ScD, MPH

Dr. Sharrelle Barber is a social epidemiologist and scholar-activist whose research— situated at the intersection of “place, race, and health”— examines the role of structural racism in shaping health and racial health inequities in Black communities in the United States and Brazil. Through her empirical work, she documents how racism becomes "embedded" in the brick and mortar and social fabric of neighborhoods and how this fundamental structural determinant of racial health inequities can be leveraged for transformative change. As a “Daughter of the South,” the insights from her research and scholarship are shaped by a lifetime of being in communion and community with Black people (to borrow language from bell hooks); bearing witness both to the collective pain endured and the collective power wielded in the face of structural oppression.

Dr. Barber is an associate professor of Epidemiology and founding director of The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity at Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health.