Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD, is a family physician and epidemiologist whose work focuses on naming, measuring, and addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the United States and the world.
Professor Jones is especially celebrated for her allegories on "race" and racism which illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many people across the globe to understand or discuss: that racism exists, racism is a system, racism saps the strength of the whole society, and we can act to dismantle racism.
She taught six years as an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, developing the school’s first course on “Race” and Racism, and served fourteen years as a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leading the development of the six-question Reactions to “Race” module for use on CDC’s surveillance systems.
As President of the American Public Health Association (2016), she launched the association on a National Campaign Against Racism that catalyzed the first of what are now 272 declarations by local jurisdictions across 43 US states and the District of Columbia that “Racism is a public health crisis.”
Since then, she has engaged in extended residencies as a Radcliffe Fellow, Harvard University (2019-2020), Presidential Visiting Fellow, Yale School of Medicine (2021), Presidential Chair, University of California, San Francisco (2021-2022), and Leverhulme Visiting Professor in Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London (2022-2023), joining with others at each of these institutions to build anti-racism courage, competency, and action.
Professor Jones is currently a Visiting Professor at King's College London; Adjunct Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University; Adjunct Associate Professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine; and advisor to many academic and community anti-racism efforts across the globe. Among her many honors, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of four honorary doctorates. With Dr. Kisha Braithwaite Holden, she recently co-edited the book Black Women and Resilience: Power, Perseverance, and Public Health (SUNY Press, 2024).
She earned her BA in molecular biology from Wellesley College, her MD from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and both her Master of Public Health and her PhD in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed residency training in General Preventive Medicine (Johns Hopkins) and in Family Medicine (Montefiore Medical Center).