Growing up in Buffalo in the 1960s, Dr. Helene Gayle knew she wanted to change the world. Her mother was a social worker, her father a small business owner, and the civil rights movement was at the forefront of her childhood.
“I always knew that my passion was for creating positive social change,” said Gayle, who was recently inaugurated as the president of Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, after a long career in public health. “I chose medicine as a tangible way to do that … but then I began to realize that public health might allow me to have a bigger, population-level impact.”
Gayle ended up having a global impact, fighting the AIDS/HIV epidemic nationally and abroad during a 20-year stint at the Centers for Disease Control, leading the international humanitarian organization CARE and the President’s Council on HIV/AIDS during the Obama administration, among other public health roles.
Gayle, who is speaking at an event Saturday at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said her experience has taught her that, whether locally, nationally or internationally, health outcomes are inextricably linked to “economic well-being.”
“When we talk about health inequities, people tend to think only about access to health care, but a lot of what drives unequal health has more to do with how we live our lives, the opportunities that people have and all the things that go into our overall well-being,” Gayle said.
She said education, income, “where you live and whether you have access to good and healthy nutrition, whether you have places to exercise, whether you have safety in your community” are all social determinants of health.
During the pandemic, Black Americans died at nearly twice the rate of other populations. The Tops Markets on Buffalo’s East Side was targeted by a racially motivated mass shooter on May 14, 2022, because it’s the sole…
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