Speaker Biosketch for All Health Is Not Created Equal: Where You Live Matters

Shannon N. Zenk, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., is the director of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her research is centered on environmental justice and health. Her work takes a contextual and spatial approach to understanding the role of the environment in health behaviors and outcomes—ultimately to produce evidence to eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities. Dr. Zenk joined NINR in 2020, after 14 years as a faculty member at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing and Institute for Health Research and Policy. She earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing, magna cum laude, from Illinois Wesleyan University; her master’s degrees in public health nursing and community health sciences from UIC; and her doctorate in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan. Dr. Zenk is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and she has been inducted into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame.