Dr. Pamela Payne Foster is a Preventive Medicine/Public Health physician who currently serves as Professor in the Department of Community Medicine/Population Health and Deputy Director of the Institute for Rural Health Research at the Tuscaloosa Campus of the University of Alabama School of Medicine. Dr. Foster’s research interests include health inequities and community engagement with a focus on HIV/AIDS related stigma in rural Southern African Americans in faith-based settings.  Prior to her current academic appointment, she has held academic appointments at Morehouse School of Medicine, SUNY Stony Brook Medical Center, George Washington University Health Sciences Center and the Tuskegee University National Center on Bioethics in Healthcare.

Dr. Michaela Howells is an Associate Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Dr. Howells is a Human Biologist specializing in maternal and child health. Her research interests include stigma, social determinants of health, reproductive justice, and health equity. She is the Director of the UNCW GAPS (Growth Adaptation Pregnancy Stress) Lab and has conducted collaborative research in the South Pacific, Asia, Africa, and the American South. Her work aims to identify barriers to health care surrounding marital status, prenatal care, menstrual equity, natural disasters, Zika infection, and HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Se Kim is the Director of Membership and Governance at that National Academy of Medicine. Kim is passionate about bringing data-based thinking and business development to mission-based organizations, and to working cross-functionally to connect people and projects to advance science. From 2013-2020, Kim served as the Associate Director of AAAS DoSER and then as the Deputy Chief Program Officer at the AAAS Office of Science, Policy, and Society Programs (OSPSP). She is trained as a geneticist, and her research work focused on the role of epigenetics in neuroscience and in plant biology. She received her BS in biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin, a PhD in molecular and human genetics from Baylor College of Medicine, and an executive MBA from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park.