Dawn M. Hunter, JD, MPH is a Deputy Director with the Network’s Southeastern Region Office. Prior to joining the Network, she served in a variety of roles focused on public health, policy, and health equity. Dawn has worked in state public health at the New Mexico Department of Health, where she started as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Visiting Attorney in Public Health Law through the Network. She also served as Director of Health Equity, Policy Director, and Deputy Cabinet Secretary. During her tenure, she led a variety of initiatives to address health system innovation, and some of her core responsibilities included managing the Department’s legislative and policy activities as well as strategic planning, performance management, and public health accreditation.
Dawn started her career in child protective services in Hillsborough County, Florida. She later transitioned into research and development as a microbiologist at the University of South Florida, Center for Biological Defense, with a focus on rapid detection methods for food and waterborne pathogens. Dawn is Certified in Public Health by the National Board of Public Health Examiners. She received her A.B. in English Literature from Princeton University, her B.S. in Microbiology and her M.P.H. in Global Communicable Disease from the University of South Florida, and her J.D. from Stetson University College of Law.
In this Q&A, Dawn Hunter, deputy director of the Network’s Southeastern Region Office, discusses some of the key elements in the chapter she authored, Lessons from the 2020 Election Cycle, for the Report.
Overview Last summer, as the disparities in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continued to worsen and amid racial justice protests following the murder of George…
Several universities across the U.S. have announced plans to require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccination before heading back to campus for the fall semester. Brown, Cornell, Duke, Northeastern, and Rutgers are among them. Some institutions of higher learning, like Virginia Tech, have determined that they cannot require vaccinations because of the vaccine’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) status, but this stance rests on shaky legal grounds.
In honor of Women's History Month, women in the Network’s Health Equity Working Group have highlighted legal or policy issues affecting women’s health that they see as critically important. The topics addressed cover: economic stability and well-being, pregnancy discrimination, period poverty, and maternal depression. The law and policy solutions discussed here have the potential to improve life for women and girls for generations to come.
Since the Biden Administration released its plan to advance racial equity in the United States, there has been significant pushback against the idea that systemic racism even exists. This questioning is not new, but it has taken on a renewed fervor as state and local governments, professional associations, hospitals and health systems, and corporations have made public commitments to addressing systemic racism and treating racism as a public health crisis.
Attend this webinar to: learn where such declarations or statements have been issued, hear specific examples of actions that jurisdictions are taking at state and local levels, and obtain practical steps for using racial equity tools to help ensure meaningful implementation that will have concrete real-world impacts.
In this webinar, speakers discussed voting in the midst of a pandemic, what to expect on Election Day and the days and weeks after, and how participation in the electoral process can create healthier communities and lead to health equity.
This guide provides an at-a-glance overview of key law and policy measures to facilitate increased civic engagement in communities.
This guide provides an at-a-glance overview of key law and policy measures that can help alleviate these disparities and assure that conditions for optimal birth outcomes are present for all.
As the COVID-19 pandemic persists in the United States, climate change and weather-related health risks, such as hurricanes, wildfires, and extreme heat, will put even greater pressure on the nation’s health and healthcare resources. There are short-term actions that can be taken to protect the health of vulnerable people along with longer-term solutions that can create equitable and resilient communities that can better respond to future disasters.
Across the U.S., an estimated 6.1 million Americans are denied the right to vote due to disenfranchisement laws. As the 2020 General Election approaches, one of the issues getting attention is the restoration of voting rights to people convicted of felonies. Research shows that restoration of civil rights helps support a transition back into the community and that civic participation is linked to lower recidivism rates among those previously incarcerated. While some states are following a recent trend to restore voting rights, others are continuing efforts to disenfranchise voters.
Conducting a regular assessment of laws and policies is a strategy for addressing health equity, especially when that assessment includes and is informed by community perspectives. The Network’s latest tool – Equity Assessment Framework for Public Health Laws and Policies – is designed to assist policymakers and practitioners in assessing new and existing laws and policies through an equity perspective. This framework can be applied to statutes, regulations, ordinances, resolutions, declarations, organizational policies, and policy guidance that either directly impact public health or impact the operations of agencies or organizations responsible for health outcomes.
