Anita Jackson, M.D., M.P.H., has joined the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy as a research professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics. She will focus on expanding academic research and innovation opportunities to underrepresented minority faculty, postdoctoral fellows and doctoral and professional students.
In her role, Jackson will identify best practices to attract and recruit a diverse pool of student and faculty candidates, develop a diversity marketing and advertising strategy, identify and eliminate barriers for recruiting diverse and qualified candidates and identify unique funding opportunities to broaden training opportunities for diverse candidates.
“This is a wonderful experience to collaborate with many of our nation’s top scientists and help them identify the best candidates to mentor and to collaborate with to solve challenging health care problems in an innovative way,” Jackson said. “I am grateful and humbled to be a part of this extraordinary team”
Jackson’s history working to expand access to health care for vulnerable populations is extensive. While in medical school at the University of Illinois, she received a national award from the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a community outreach program she created and also received a $10 million grant for creating a minority medical student mentor matching project, the National Minority Mentor Recruitment Network.
While earning her M.P.H. at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she started the Harvard Journal of Minority Public Health. She was the first African-American woman to complete a surgery residency at the University of Tennessee and afterward the first African-American female otolaryngologist to practice in the state of North Carolina.
Jackson is currently working with the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and the Physician Assistant Education Association, for whom she serves as a consultant, to develop the Center for PA Diversity, Cultural Competency and Inter-Professional Practice Education with a goal of creating satellite physician assistant programs at historically black colleges and universities.
Most recently, Jackson served as interim director of the Bio Manufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise at North Carolina Central University.
Jackson received her B.S. from Princeton University and her M.S. with a neurobiology concentration from Stanford University.