2024 MPH & MS Class Day Details

Irene Dankwa-Mullan, MD, MPH

Dr. Dankwa-Mullan was born in Ghana, West Africa. She came to the United States after high school and completed undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at Barnard College, New York City in 1992.  She received her Master of Public Health degree from Yale School of Public Health in 1997, the same year that she earned her Doctor of Medicine degree from the Geisel School of Medicine in a dual degree program.  She completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore Maryland and stayed on to work for the Public Health Services Agency in Maryland.

Dr. Dankwa-Mullan is a physician leader, national thought leader and scientist with diverse local, regional, and national leadership experience working in primary care, public health and health equity and the community.  She is currently Chief Health Officer at Marti Health, a health equity start-up company that promotes comprehensive quality care and case management coordination targeting underserved and socially disadvantaged communities.  She serves on the Geisel School of Medicine Advisory board. She is also on the Board of two health technology start-up companies leveraging AI to address health disparities.  She is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Dr. Dankwa-Mullan served the very first and only Chief Health Equity Officer at IBM - Watson Health.  Her work at IBM received recognition and she was appointed to the IBM Industry Academy of distinguished leaders, to work collaboratively with other industry leaders on creative and cutting-edge technology innovation.

Prior to IBM, Dr. Dankwa-Mullan served in various leadership roles at the National Institutes of Health.  Dr. Dankwa-Mullan helped launched the transformational research agenda at the NIH to advance the science of health disparities research in a deliberate and inclusive engagement process involving the NIH, community partners and the broader scientific community.  She received numerous awards including the distinguished individual NIH Director’s award for sustained and outstanding leadership in advancing the science of health disparities research.

Dr. Dankwa-Mullan has maintained keen passion for patient-centered care, promoting equitable health outcomes and the patient experience while identifying opportunities to create more inclusive, culturally competent, equitable and compassionate clinical care services. Prior to NIH, she served as Medical Director for public health services, working with community coalitions, youth, and school-based programs to develop community prevention, education, and screening programs.

Dr. Dankwa-Mullan has published widely on health disparities, including on the integration of health equity, artificial intelligence and machine-learning, ethical artificial intelligence (AI) and social justice principles into data science methods and technology development lifecycle with over 90 publications.  She is also the lead scientific editor and author of the first authoritative resource scientific textbook, “The Science of Health Disparities Research” designed to help researchers, the healthcare and medical community identify research questions, design, and conduct studies with culturally appropriate interventions, and advance the science.  She currently serves on several advisory boards providing expertise on health equity, artificial intelligence (AI), and bias, implementation science, and evaluation research. She is also a member of Geisel's Board of Advisors.