Dr. Marcella Nunez Smith

Biography

Marcella Nunez-Smith is an Associate Professor at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Her research primarily focuses on promoting health equity for structurally marginalized populations, emphasizing the importance of supporting healthcare workforce diversity and developing patient-reported measurements of healthcare quality. She is a principal investigator on various NIH-funded research projects aimed at assessing patient experiences of discrimination in healthcare settings. Nunez-Smith has conducted significant investigations into the promotion and retention of diversity within academic medical faculties and has published numerous articles concerning the experiences of minority students and faculty. She has also established the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network (ECHORN), which collaborates with four Eastern Caribbean islands to enhance research leadership capacity and health outcomes within the region. Her work involves recruiting community-dwelling adult cohorts for chronic disease studies, as well as expanding these cohorts to include children. Nunez-Smith holds numerous awards for her teaching and mentoring efforts and is board-certified in internal medicine. She completed her residency at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and received her fellowship training through the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program. She earned her BA in Biological Anthropology and Psychology from Swarthmore College.

Research Interests

Experience