Dr. Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati is Associate Dean for Community Initiatives at the Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) and Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California. She is a professor in Population and Public Health Sciences and the Director for the Center for Health Equity in the Americas. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati serves as faculty Advisor to Keck Medicine on community benefits. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and is a Co-Principal Investigator of the Community Scholars Collaborative on Health Equity (CHES), a 10 schools collaborative that spans multiple disciplines from Cinema, to Social Work, Population and Public Health Sciences, Engineering, Religious Life, Journalism and Communication. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, supporting the “All of Us” one million individuals Research Program, and the Healthy Americas Institute at USC. She also sits on important committees, including the Research committee of the California Dialogue on Cancer and several critical committees to help advance policy through science.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati is an expert in cancer disparities research with diverse populations, in developing culturally specific effective cancer prevention interventions, and in engaging at risk populations in community-based participatory research. She has been a key member of six NIH funded research centers. Currently she is one of the key investigators in the Tobacco Center for Regulatory Sciences at USC. Has also participated in the Transdisciplinary Center on Energetics and Cancer, and the Childhood Obesity Research Center. Her research has helped to shape the way scientific information is communicated to diverse populations, and has been a voice for inclusion, outreach, and engagement of community opinion leaders and underserved communities in research to eliminate disparities in our catchment area and beyond. Her innovative and transdisciplinary work has won prestigious awards. She co-produced with Dr. Sheila Murphy at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Doe Mayer and Jeremy Kagan at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the “Tamale Lesson”, a video that has transformed the way we deliver cancer knowledge through narrative to populations suffering disparities. Tamale Lesson won multiple prestigious national level awards from American Public Health Association (APHA) and the 10 Year NIH Common Fund. She is also the Director of Es Tiempo, another award winning stunningly beautiful public education campaign, that uses environmental cues such as the purple bloom of the jacaranda trees in Los Angeles, to deliver in language messages that encourage screening for cervical cancer and prevention through vaccinations against the Humanpapilloma virus. Her work on risk factors for cancer includes pioneering work on tobacco prevention and control with diverse population groups, including Hispanic/Latinos, American Indians, Korean Americans, African Americans, and Non Hispanic Whites with low socioeconomic status. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati is well-know nationally and internationally for her research and for her bidirectional model, connecting community scientists, citizen scientists, community health workers and promotores de salud with academia.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati speaks multiple languages and has five academic degrees, having studied in the United States, Latin America, Canada and Europe (Belgium). She obtained her PhD and an MPH in Public Health from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where she focused on community health sciences and social epidemiology. She has a master’s degree from the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and received dual degrees in Industrial and Clinical Psychology from the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Urena in the Dominican Republic. She has also studied at Laval University in Quebec and at Cambridge University in England.
She has well over 200 publications including in prestigious journals, such as the American Journal for Public Health. She has been recognized by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and City Council for presenting scientific evidence that led to Los Angeles adopting regulation to curtail e-cigarettes. She was also recognized in 2018 by the State of California Senate, and by the California Latino Legislative Caucus for her contributions to the elimination of health disparities among the citizens of Los Angeles. In 2018 she won the prestigious “Making a Different World Award” from the National Latino Cancer Conference. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati was also announced by The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) as the recipient of the 2020 AACR Distinguished Lectureship on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities. She is a member of the AACR’s Minorities in Cancer Research and Women in Cancer Research groups, and is also one of ten appointed members of The National Library of Medicine Board of Regents.
To Contact: baezcond@usc.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Dr. Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD