Renata Schiavo, Founder and President, Board of Directors
Renata Schiavo, PhD, MA, CCL, founder and board president, is a passionate advocate for health equity and a committed voice on the importance of addressing and removing barriers that prevent people from leading healthy and productive lives. Determined to build a movement that would bring together professionals from different disciplines and sectors and community leaders, Dr. Schiavo founded Health Equity Initiative in 2011 because of her belief in the importance of community engagement and multisectoral partnerships as key strategies to address complex health and social issues. Since the organization's inception, Dr. Schiavo has provided vision and leadership to the organization's programs and activities. In collaboration with other members of Health Equity Initiative's Board of Directors, she has led teams of 10-25 volunteers and project-specific staff focused on connecting and building capacity of established and emerging health equity leaders and growing the health equity movement. She is the creator and chairperson of Health Equity Initiative's signature "Partnership Summits", has designed key elements of HEI professional development and capacity building programs, which have reached 1,600+ professionals, and established partnerships on a variety of organizational efforts and projects with 30+ organizations. Today, Health Equity Initiative has an extensive network of members, followers, associates, and newsletters subscribers.
Renata has worked for over 25+ years at the interface of health equity, global health, social and behavior change communication, health systems, health communication, community health and development, population health, health policy/advocacy, multisectoral partnerships, and community and patient and citizen engagement. Across projects, Renata has dedicated her efforts to improve health and social outcomes among populations experiencing marginalization or other kind of disadvantage, including communities of color, Indigenous and immigrant communities in the United States, and low-income groups, refugees, and patients from underserved areas in global settings. She is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where her courses focus on topics at the intersection of the social determinants of health, health equity, and health communication; trends in child health and early childhood development programs; and community-based participatory research (CBPR); a Principal at Strategies for Equity and Communication Impact (SECI), a global consultancy; the Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health (Taylor & Francis), and serves on the editorial board of Health Equity.
Dr. Schiavo has been actively engaged in the response to COVID-19 both in the United States and around the world. Since the pandemic first struck in March 2020, she has been leading Health Equity Initiative's advocacy efforts to make sure health equity stays on the table during pandemic response and recovery, and has conceptualized and oversaw the development of multiple resources and forums. She has also been collaborating with the Region 2 Public Health Training Center at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, for which she serves as co-investigator and subject matter expert, to assess barriers to responding to COVID-19 in New York State, as well as to conceive and develop a variety of training modules to promote a community- and equity-driven approach to the COVID-19 response. She has also been serving as a media resource on COVID-19-related issues with interviews published in The Washington Post, ReachMD, and Elite Daily, among others. Moreover, she has led and launched several global initiatives and article collections on COVID-19 as part of her role at the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health, and participated in roundtables and call to actions by the journal Health Equity.
Throughout her career, Dr. Schiavo has designed and led numerous consensus-driven processes and cross-sectoral interventions. She brings to her work her in-depth understanding of multiple sectors, systems, and players, and her passion for making a difference in people's health and lives. As an advocate, researcher, and practitioner, Renata is interested in community- and system-driven multisectoral models, partnerships, and interventions to address health, equity, and social issues, and to build social support for improved outcomes via policies, information, and community-based resources that encourage healthy behaviors and social change. She has experience in 20+ health, medical, and human rights areas, including infant mortality inequities, maternal, newborn, infant and child health, vaccine hesitancy, addressing misinformation, epidemics and emerging diseases (including COVID-19), cultural humility, implicit and institutional bias, chronic malnutrition, early childhood development, and immigrant health, and has worked in the United States and several countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia.
Dr. Schiavo has served on advisory and/or expert panels for the World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent, UNICEF, and the American Public Health Association (APHA), and has published in leading peer-reviewed journals. She is the author of Health Communication: From Theory to Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley), now in its second edition, as well as 160+ scientific presentations and 60+ publications. Her capacity building and training experience includes staff members and community leaders from 350+ organizations
Renata was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Career Award of the Public Health Education and Health Promotion (PHEHP) section of the American Public Health Association for lifetime work “to advancing health communication and health equity”; is the recipient of a 2016 Presidential Citation by the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE); and was recognized as one of 300 Women Leaders in Global Health by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Dr. Schiavo is an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine; an Associate of the CORE Group; and serves as Senior Advisor and Past Chair, Feature Sessions of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Global Public Health Film Festival. Renata has also significant management experience as she previously served on the boards of directors of Solving Kids’ Cancer, Public Health Foundation Enterprise (PHFE), and the Italian American Committee on Education, as well as an elected voting member of the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association.
Her diverse background includes past academic positions at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, New York University, and The College of New Jersey; Executive Vice President, Cooney Waters Group (now Health Unlimited); and Head, Corporate and Marketing Communications and Social Responsibility Programs, Rhodia Farma (now Sanofi Aventis), Brazil. Renata is fluent in English, Italian, and Portuguese, and can read and understand Spanish and French. Renata enjoys spending time with her two daughters and her husband, Roger, walking on a beach, traveling, and art gallery hopping. For a full bio visit www.renataschiavo.com.
Renata has worked for over 25+ years at the interface of health equity, global health, social and behavior change communication, health systems, health communication, community health and development, population health, health policy/advocacy, multisectoral partnerships, and community and patient and citizen engagement. Across projects, Renata has dedicated her efforts to improve health and social outcomes among populations experiencing marginalization or other kind of disadvantage, including communities of color, Indigenous and immigrant communities in the United States, and low-income groups, refugees, and patients from underserved areas in global settings. She is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where her courses focus on topics at the intersection of the social determinants of health, health equity, and health communication; trends in child health and early childhood development programs; and community-based participatory research (CBPR); a Principal at Strategies for Equity and Communication Impact (SECI), a global consultancy; the Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health (Taylor & Francis), and serves on the editorial board of Health Equity.
Dr. Schiavo has been actively engaged in the response to COVID-19 both in the United States and around the world. Since the pandemic first struck in March 2020, she has been leading Health Equity Initiative's advocacy efforts to make sure health equity stays on the table during pandemic response and recovery, and has conceptualized and oversaw the development of multiple resources and forums. She has also been collaborating with the Region 2 Public Health Training Center at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, for which she serves as co-investigator and subject matter expert, to assess barriers to responding to COVID-19 in New York State, as well as to conceive and develop a variety of training modules to promote a community- and equity-driven approach to the COVID-19 response. She has also been serving as a media resource on COVID-19-related issues with interviews published in The Washington Post, ReachMD, and Elite Daily, among others. Moreover, she has led and launched several global initiatives and article collections on COVID-19 as part of her role at the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health, and participated in roundtables and call to actions by the journal Health Equity.
Throughout her career, Dr. Schiavo has designed and led numerous consensus-driven processes and cross-sectoral interventions. She brings to her work her in-depth understanding of multiple sectors, systems, and players, and her passion for making a difference in people's health and lives. As an advocate, researcher, and practitioner, Renata is interested in community- and system-driven multisectoral models, partnerships, and interventions to address health, equity, and social issues, and to build social support for improved outcomes via policies, information, and community-based resources that encourage healthy behaviors and social change. She has experience in 20+ health, medical, and human rights areas, including infant mortality inequities, maternal, newborn, infant and child health, vaccine hesitancy, addressing misinformation, epidemics and emerging diseases (including COVID-19), cultural humility, implicit and institutional bias, chronic malnutrition, early childhood development, and immigrant health, and has worked in the United States and several countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia.
Dr. Schiavo has served on advisory and/or expert panels for the World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent, UNICEF, and the American Public Health Association (APHA), and has published in leading peer-reviewed journals. She is the author of Health Communication: From Theory to Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley), now in its second edition, as well as 160+ scientific presentations and 60+ publications. Her capacity building and training experience includes staff members and community leaders from 350+ organizations
Renata was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Career Award of the Public Health Education and Health Promotion (PHEHP) section of the American Public Health Association for lifetime work “to advancing health communication and health equity”; is the recipient of a 2016 Presidential Citation by the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE); and was recognized as one of 300 Women Leaders in Global Health by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Dr. Schiavo is an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine; an Associate of the CORE Group; and serves as Senior Advisor and Past Chair, Feature Sessions of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Global Public Health Film Festival. Renata has also significant management experience as she previously served on the boards of directors of Solving Kids’ Cancer, Public Health Foundation Enterprise (PHFE), and the Italian American Committee on Education, as well as an elected voting member of the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association.
Her diverse background includes past academic positions at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, New York University, and The College of New Jersey; Executive Vice President, Cooney Waters Group (now Health Unlimited); and Head, Corporate and Marketing Communications and Social Responsibility Programs, Rhodia Farma (now Sanofi Aventis), Brazil. Renata is fluent in English, Italian, and Portuguese, and can read and understand Spanish and French. Renata enjoys spending time with her two daughters and her husband, Roger, walking on a beach, traveling, and art gallery hopping. For a full bio visit www.renataschiavo.com.
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