Ruth Enid Zambrana

Ruth Enid Zambrana is a medical and community sociologist and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Her scholarship applies a critical intersectional lens to structural inequality and racial, Hispanic ethnicity, and gender inequities in population health and higher education trajectories. Zambrana has published widely on health and racial inequity in her major field concentrations: women’s health, maternal and child health, socioeconomic health disparities and life course impacts on health and mental well-being of historically underrepresented minorities.

Her most recent book is “Toxic Ivory Tower: The Consequences of Work Stress on the Health of Underrepresented Minority Faculty” (2018). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2011 Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award by the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Latinos/as Section, the 2013 American Public Health Association (APHA) Latino Caucus, Founding Member Award for Vision and Leadership, the 2021 APHA Lyndon Haviland Public Health Mentoring Award, and the 2021-22 Distinguished Research Fellow at the Latino Research Institute University of Texas, Austin.

She is also the director of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at UMD and has a secondary appointment as Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Medicine.