Emily Wang, MD’03, is a professor of internal medicine and public health at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health. She is an internationally recognized physician scientist and leader in the field of the health effects of mass incarceration.
Wang is the founding and current director of the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, a partnership of Yale University School of Medicine and Yale Law School, committed to achieving health equity by ending mass incarceration. The Center works to identify the legal, policy, and practice levers that can improve the health of individuals and communities affected by mass incarceration. She is the co-founder of the Transitions Clinic Network (TCN), the nation’s largest network of health centers dedicated to caring for individuals recently released from carceral facilities by employing community health workers with histories of incarceration. TCN is committed to reversing the harms of mass incarceration by eliminating racial health and economic disparities directly through the provision of care and health system-level transformation.
“I am inspired by her journey and her commitment to serve and advocate for social justice and health equity among a community of people who have experienced marginalization.”
–Nomination letter
She is the recipient of a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a “Genius Grant.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as co-chair for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s committee on “Best Practices for Implementing Decarceration as a Strategy for Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in Correctional Facilities.” She currently serves on the World Health Organization’s Health in Prisons Programme Steering Committee and recently co-led a curriculum for European prison health providers. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Education: Duke University School of Medicine
Training: University of California; University of California, San Francisco
Primary Titles: Professor of Medicine and of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine; Director, SEICHE Center for Health and Justice
Story originally published in DukeMed Alumni News, Spring 2024.
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