Shervin Assari, MD, MPH, Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science, USA
Dr Assari is a social epidemiologist whose research spans epidemiology, policy, health behaviors, and neuroscience. He focuses on structural factors that drive racial and economic disparities in brain health and development. With over 500 publications, he serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. His theory, Minorities’ Diminished Returns, is recognized in the US for explaining persistent health inequalities among middle-class populations and the widening racial disparities within high socioeconomic status groups. His research challenges the notion that education alone can level societal inequalities. Recently, he has explored how social stratification contributes to disparities in brain health across socioeconomic and class divisions. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Society of Behavioral Medicine.
Charles C. Flippen II, MD, FAAN, FANA, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, USA
Dr Flippen is the Richard and Ruth Walter Professor of Neurology and Associate Dean of the Center for Continuing Professional Development at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM). In the Department of Neurology, he is Vice Chair for Education, Co-Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and sub-specialist in Headache Medicine. He is board certified in neurology and headache medicine. He is a director on the board and Treasurer of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). In the American Neurological Association (ANA) Dr Flippen has served as co-director of the Education and Headache Special Interest Groups, lectured on career development, and served on the Addressing the Pipeline for the Academic Neurology Leadership workgroup. At the DGSOM, Dr Flippen also serves on the Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) committee, and a JEDI Academic Mentor for junior faculty from groups underrepresented in medicine. He has published on issues of diversity and equity in headache medicine care, and academic faculty affairs.
Jay B. Lusk, MD, MBA, Duke University, USA
Dr Lusk is a clinician-scientist in preventive medicine, population health science, and data science. His research focuses on health systems transformation to better prevent and manage chronic disease burden, with a focus on brain health promotion and multimorbidity prevention. He has a particular focus on health equity and in developing health policy approaches to promote equity in healthy longevity. He has published extensively on the association between social stratification—in the form of neighborhood socioeconomic status—and health outcomes.
Shana D. Stites, PsyD, MA, MS, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Dr Stites is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on advancing diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease with the goal of understanding ways to promote wellbeing. As part of this work, Dr Stites focuses on characterizing how early disease affects social, psychological, and cognitive facets of subjective experience and how aspects of identity, such as age, gender, and race, operate as social and structural determinants in the disease experience. Understanding these features of the disease experience may offer insights into early disease effects and into development of interventions that help limit burdens of the disease.
