Sarah Gehlert, Ph.D., will be installed as the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, in the Brown Hall Lounge.
The professorship is named for Lee, former chairman of Lee/Rowan Co., which Lee co-founded in 1939. A WUSTL alumnus, Lee is known for his widespread philanthropic efforts, encouraging community and regional partnerships to better educate people of all ages and economic backgrounds.
In 1996, Lee was named St. Louis Man of the Year, and in 1997, he received the National Outstanding Philanthropist Award. In 1999, Worth magazine named Lee one of “The 100 Most Generous Americans.”
For his outstanding efforts, the University bestowed Lee with the Robert S. Brookings Award in 2000 as well as an honorary degree in 2002.
“Sarah is a unique scholar in her ability to work across scientific disciplines as well as work effectively with diverse communities to address disparities,” said Edward F. Lawlor, Ph.D., dean and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor. “Her work embodies the spirit of community engagement on which the E. Desmond Lee chair is based.”
Gehlert, also a scholar at the Institute for Public Health, joined the Brown School in 2009 from the University of Chicago, where she was the Helen Ross Professor in the School of Social Service Administration, Institute of Mind and Biology, and the Department of Comparative Human Development. She is a research member of the Siteman Cancer Center.
While at Chicago, Gehlert served as the associate director of the university’s National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Institute for Translational Medicine and co-chaired its Community Translation Science Cluster.
She remains the principal investigator and director of the University of Chicago’s NIH-funded Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research, now a joint center with WUSTL.
Gehlert’s publications focus on social influences on health, especially the health of vulnerable populations. She is working on the influence of neighborhood and community factors, such as community violence and unsafe housing, on psychosocial functioning among African-American women newly diagnosed with breast cancer.
Gehlert, president of the Society for Social Work and Research, serves on the external advisory committee of the University of Chicago’s Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Breast Cancer and the Chicago Breast Cancer Mortality Reduction Task Force.
Her professional activities also include memberships on the nine-member board of scientific councilors of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH; the professional advisory board of the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago; and the steering committee of the Washington Park Children’s Free Clinic in Chicago.