From: CDC OD Announcements <CDCODANNOUNCE@cdc.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2019 3:29 PM
To: CDC OD Announcements <CDCODANNOUNCE@cdc.gov>
Subject: Death of Former CDC Employee William (Bill) Carter Jenkins
 

It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of former CDC employee William (Bill) Carter Jenkins, PhD, MPH. 

Bill began his CDC career in 1967 as one of the first African Americans to join the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. He first served as a statistician in the National Center of Health Statistics and then became its first equal employment opportunity officer. In 1980, Bill joined the Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV Prevention in the National Center for Prevention Services (NCPS) where he served as chief of the Research and Evaluation Statistics Section, and in 1982 founded Project IMHOTEP—a source for recruiting undergraduate underrepresented minorities to the public health profession with CDC support. In 1988, he founded Morehouse College’s Public Health Sciences Institute to better prepare underrepresented minority students for entry into graduate schools of public health with special emphasis on the quantitative areas of biostatistics, epidemiology, and occupational safety and health. As an expert in epidemiology and prevention of sexually transmitted disease among racial and ethnic minority communities, Bill managed the Minority Health Activities Program and the National Minority Organizations’ HIV Prevention Program.

In 1996, after NCPS became a part of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHSTP), Bill served as a supervisory epidemiologist in the NCHSTP Office of the Director where he managed the Participant Health Benefits Program, which ensures provision of medical services to the survivors of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male and affected family members. He was instrumental in the May 16, 1997 Presidential Apology for the study and, in 2002, produced a documentary video with study survivors. In 2001, Bill led the development of the NCHSTP Minority Health Strategic Plan that justified the creation of NCHSTP’s Office for Health Disparities, directed by the Associate Director for Health Disparities (now Health Equity).

After Bill retired from CDC in 2003, he became a professor of public health sciences at Morehouse College and associate director of Morehouse’s Research Center on Health Disparities. At Morehouse, he instructed graduate and undergraduate students in biostatistics, epidemiology, and public health; consulted on the development of public health programs at other historically black colleges and universities; and worked in community-based participatory research. He also served as an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC-Chapel Hill, NC.

Bill was an active member of many professional organizations, helping to shape the practice of epidemiology and public health through his leadership. He was a member of the American College of Epidemiology and served on their Board of Directors. He also was a member of the American Statistical Association and chair of that organization’s Epidemiology Section. He also served on the Governing Council and Executive Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Through APHA, in keeping with his vision of reducing health disparities, Bill founded the Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues, an APHA-affiliated organization focused on supporting young researchers in implementing high-quality research on minority health.

Bill earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Morehouse College. He also held a master’s degree in biostatistics from Georgetown University, and both a Master in Public Health degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in epidemiology from UNC. He also completed postdoctoral work in biostatistics at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
 

He will be greatly missed by his former colleagues at CDC who remember him fondly for his kindness and dedication to health equity, social justice, and mentorship.