Nancy Schoenberg
Director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation; Associate Vice President for Research, Health Disparities; Associate Director of UK Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences
Nancy Schoenberg (she/her) serves as the Marion Pearsall Professor of Behavioral Science in UK’s College of Medicine. She is the founding director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation (CHET), an Associate Vice President for Research , and an Associate Director of UK’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research. She is a medical anthropologist and gerontologist by background.
In addition to her role as lead for project 16, Dr. Schoenberg serves as a DEI Executive Sponsor for the Research Workstream.
Dr. Schoenberg’s research involves addressing health inequities to achieve health equity, particularly among rural residents and other underserved populations. She employs community-based participatory research strategies and, in partnership with community members, develops culturally adapted and appropriate interventions. These interventions focus on the contextual underpinnings and lifestyle factors that elevate the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Her research has been continuously funded over the past twenty years, mainly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She regularly serves on grant review panels, editorial boards, and partners on research projects allowing her to forge invaluable networks of collaborators from across the nation and the world.
Her passion for research is matched by her commitment to training the next generation of health equity scholars. She has been fortunate enough to work with dozens of talented students from diverse backgrounds over these years. She has served as a PI, MPI or co-investigator on six training grants, as mentor to several NRSA and K awardees, and as a faculty mentor to over 80 doctoral, postdoctoral, or junior faculty members. She and her junior colleagues have published over 200 abstracts and 150+ peer reviewed publications.
During her more than two decades on UK’s faculty, she has relished cross-disciplinary research collaborations from across our university’s 17 colleges and professional schools. She has been privileged to participate in and lead efforts that empower community stakeholders, students and faculty to undertake creative and impactful research and scholarship.
Center for Health Equity and Transformation
CHET’s transformative research focuses on intervention, implementation, dissemination and translational science to promote equity in health and healthcare for at-risk populations. In addition to its own faculty core, CHET offers the entire UK campus pilot grant competitions, speaker series, community outreach assistance, consultation and assistance in incorporating health equity concepts into grant proposals.
Expand the Inclusive Postdoctoral Enrichment Program
Dr. Schoenberg is the lead for the Expand Postdoctoral Programs initiative. The DEI Implementation Plan supports the work of the previously established program, the Inclusive Postdoctoral Enrichment Program (IPEP). This program supports the research career development of diverse postdoctoral fellows and the research career development of graduate students and diverse faculty.