Sirry Alang earned a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

In 2023, health services researcher and medical sociologist Sirry Alang joined Pitt’s School of Education as an associate professor in the Department of Health and Human Development.

A year later, she is the co-principal investigator of a project with Drexel University that received a $6 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. About $400,000 will go directly to the School of Education.

The project is titled “Illuminating and Addressing Structural Racism in the Healthcare Industry: Building the Field from the Ground Up” and is an initiative of the Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements and Population Health Equity in Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health. The mission: engage community stakeholders across three to five regional sites to collect data and develop and disseminate a framework that analyzes structural racism within the health care industry to create solutions that bolster change and eliminate inequities.

“Addressing structural racism requires understanding and challenging the unequal distribution of power within the health care industry,” said Alang, associate dean for equity and justice, in a March 1 press release. “This project seeks to uncover the mechanisms that perpetuate inequities and identify opportunities for meaningful change.”

Alang earned her bachelor’s in sociology and anthropology from the University of Buea in Cameroon, a master’s in sociology from Lehigh University and a doctorate in health services research, policy and administration from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her research explores Black communities and social determinants of health as well as how best to implement antiracist policies and practices to improve the health of these populations.

— Kara Henderson, photography by Aimee Obidzinski