Jewel Mullen, M.D., MPH, is the associate dean for health equity at the Dell Medical School, as well as an associate professor in the school’s population health and internal medicine departments. She also serves as a senior consultant for Ascension Seton to help meet health equity goals across its system.
Mullen is an internist, epidemiologist, public health physician leader and the former principal deputy assistant secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While at HHS, she also served as the acting assistant secretary for health and acting director of the National Vaccine Program Office during the months bridging the transition from the Obama to the Trump administrations. Prior to her time at HHS, Mullen served for five years as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health. Her career has spanned clinical, research, teaching and administrative roles focused on improving the health of all people, especially those who are underserved. She is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in building effective community-based chronic disease prevention programs and for her commitment to improving individual and population health by strengthening coordination between community, public health and health care systems.
Mullen is the former director of the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and medical director of Baystate Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. She has held faculty appointments at the New York University, University of Virginia, Yale University and Tufts University schools of medicine.
As Connecticut’s public health commissioner, Mullen created an Office of Health Equity Research, Evaluation and Policy to ensure that reducing disparities was included as a deliberate, measurable outcome of the department’s programmatic and regulatory efforts. She also successfully spearheaded initiatives to reduce racial disparities in low birth weight and infant mortality, advanced legislation to improve end-of-life care and led development of the state’s health assessment and health improvement plan as precursors to the department achieving accreditation by the Public Health Accreditation Board. As commissioner, she also directed her agency’s response to events such as natural disasters, the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola. Her accomplishments at HHS included participation in the coordination of the federal public health response to Zika, working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), other federal partners and leaders in Puerto Rico.
Mullen serves on the editorial board of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Policies for Action National Advisory Committee, the Alzheimer’s Association/CDC Healthy Brain Initiative Leadership Committee and the Medical Education Committee for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She also is a member of the Committee on a National Strategy for Cancer Control in the United States at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. A former member of the Advisory Committee to the CDC Director and its subcommittee on health disparities, Mullen chaired the CDC’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection and Control Federal Advisory Committee. She is a former president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Board certified in internal medicine, Mullen received her bachelor’s degree and Master of Public Health from Yale University where she also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in psychosocial epidemiology. She graduated from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society, and completed her residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Lailea Noel is an assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work.
Noel’s research investigates the social and economic conditions that contribute to lower cancer treatment utilization and higher mortality rates in marginalized communities, particularly communities of color, and communities within residentially segregated urban and rural neighborhoods. She has a passion for conducting community-based participatory research and has a wealth of experience engaging communities, social scientists and medical professionals in such research partnerships. Her research interest and approach are informed by the two decades she spent as an oncology social work administrator at prestigious organizations — including the American Cancer Society and University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center — prior to pursuing her Ph.D.
During her doctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Noel participated in a five-year, community-based participatory research project in an area with high rates of poverty and the worst cancer mortality rates in metropolitan St. Louis. Her dissertation work, supported by an American Cancer Society Doctoral Training Grant in Oncology Social Work, explored the experiences of African American women in St. Louis, who had not started treatment for breast cancer six-months to two years following diagnosis. Since she joined the NYU Silver faculty in 2016, and was the 2018-19 Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin.
d Program 2023-202
