Tanjala S. Purnell

Tanjala Purnell, PhD, MPH is the Director of Education at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity where she leads the center’s award-winning educational and training initiatives for clinical and public health scholars working to address health disparities. She is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Surgery, Health Policy and Management, and Health Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins University. A native of the Mississippi Delta, Dr. Purnell is a public health researcher whose work includes the development of novel programs to address patient/family, healthcare system, and community-level factors that contribute to health disparities for patients with chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, diabetes, and hypertension. Her research studies have been funded by grant awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She has presented her research at national and international meetings and has received numerous awards and honors. She has published findings from her health equity research in leading journals, including JAMA and Health Affairs, and she is a recipient of multiple Teaching Excellence Awards from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.