Derek M Griffith, PhD

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey Population Health and Health Equity University Professor

Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine

Fellow and Senior Advisor on Health Equity and Anti-Racism in The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics

Department of Family and Community Health

Email: dmg7@upenn.edu

Trained in psychology and public health, Dr. Griffith’s program of research focuses on developing anti-racism approaches to achieve racial, ethnic, and gender equity in health. Dr. Griffith is a contributor to and co-editor of three books, and his fourth co-edited book - Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional, 2nd Edition will be published in October 2024. He has been the principal investigator of research grants from the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and several institutes within the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Griffith serves on the editorial boards of several public health and men’s health journals. Recently, he received a citation from the president of the American Psychological Association, “For his extraordinary leadership in addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation and specifically for African American and Latino men”.

We prepare students to understand how to address racial, ethnic, and gender inequities in health and to apply anti-racism principles to achieve health equity.

Education

BA, Psychology and African American Studies (double major), University of Maryland at College Park , 1993
PhD, Clinical-Community Psychology, DePaul University, 2002
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Community-Based Participatory Health Disparities Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, 2004

Social Justice

Dr. Griffith has given invited lectures or been a panelist for organizations and events such as The Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health, the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, American Academy of Health Behavior, NIDDK, the CDC (all staff), NIH OBSSR, NCI Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, The Brookings Institution, the Alliance for Health Policy, Physicians for Human Rights, the NIDDK Centers for Diabetes Translation Research Directors Annual Meeting, the National Maternal Health Innovation Symposium and others. The topics of these lectures and consultations range from racial and gender inequities in COVID-19, structural racism and implementation science, anti-racism and implementation science, well-being as a policy metric, structural racism, fatherhood, health equity, and men’s health equity.

Teaching

Dr. Griffith has taught courses that explore the full range of determinants that influence the health of populations and their contributions to racial or ethnic health inequities. In this course, he explores what it means to develop interventions to reduce health inequities versus eliminating them.

He has taught courses that examine how men’s health is determined by structural forces, and that it is critical to use an intersectional lens to understand and address the poor health of men.

Research

Dr. Griffith’s goal is to advance the science of intervening to achieve health equity in the United States (US) and across the globe. Building on his background as a public health psychologist, he has built a program of research on four pillars:

Centering the experience of Black men as a foundation for understanding the limitations of our approach to increasing population health and achieving health equity.
Developing individually tailored and multi-level interventions to improve Black men’s health, particularly preventing and managing chronic diseases.
Advancing the science of anti-racism to make health equity a reality rather than an ideal or aspiration.
Developing an intersectional approach to health policy development and evaluating health policy impact the refines how the World Health Organization (WHO), WHO regional offices, the United Nations (Sustainable Development Goals), and other transnational organizations consider gender, men’s health, and health equity.

Selected Career Highlights

Chair of Global Action on Men’s Health
Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Men’s Social & Community Health 
American Psychological Association Presidential Citation (2023). Presented by American Psychological Association President, Dr. Thema Bryant, “for his extraordinary leadership in addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation and specifically for African American and Latino Men” at the Consolidated Board Meeting opening session, Washington, DC, March 17, 2023.
Tom Bruce Award (2013). The Tom Bruce Award is presented by the Community-Based Public Health Caucus (CBPH) at the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) meeting in recognition of an individual’s leadership in community-based public health. The award recognizes “an individual who has made a significant contribution to the CBPH Caucus and the CBPH Movement”. Quoting from the award, Dr. Griffith’s research on “eliminating health disparities that vary by race, ethnicity and gender” earned him his award.
Fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior for significant contributions to the field of health behavior research

Accepting Mentees?

Accepting Fellows?

Welcome Back Fall 2024: A Message from Dean Villarruel

At the start of this fall semester, I welcome you—not just to the hustle of a new semester, but to a renewed chance to be part of our vibrant Penn Nursing community. We talk a lot about what we want our culture to be at the School, and for me the thing that makes the biggest difference is being deliberate about connecting with people. We need to understand how connecting reinforces our community and our health—and wards off isolation that can lead to loneliness.