Keypoint Newsletter: Announcing Our 2025 Health Equity Series & Working Group

By Heather Gerhart

Keystone Symposia has an ongoing initiative to engage diverse voices from around the world in conversations that raise awareness for health disparities in various disease states and initiate discussions on how to rectify health inequities through scientific research and discovery. This year we are expanding this pilot program to include over a dozen conferences in our portfolio! Conferences in our 2025 Health Equity Series will feature programming that showcases how scientists are bringing molecular, cellular, and genetic approaches to bear on health equity research and outcomes. Each meeting will include forums designed to catalyze conversations around health equity, with the aim of inspiring scientists who attend our meetings to consider health equity approaches and ‘best practices’ in their research design.

In support of these efforts, we have established the Keystone Symposia Health Equity Working Group (HEWG) to complement and expand upon the expertise on our Scientific Advisory Board. The HEWG is comprised of scientific experts whose research considers strategies to drive clinical advances for diverse populations in need. This group is helping to advance our goal to embed health equity content across our conferences by identifying key topics within our conference portfolio that are priorities to showcase health equity issues.

By catalyzing these conversations, and bringing in diverse voices, we aim to openly address these issues and foster collaborative and innovative approaches to make health and medicine equitable to all.

Meet the Health Equity Working Group Below!

2025 Health Equity Series

Health Equity Forums will be embedded in the following conference programs:

• Precision Oncology: Emerging Technologies & Implementation 
• Innate Immune Memory: Mechanisms and Consequences 
• JOINT MEETINGS: Trajectories to Heart Failure: Immunometabolic Mechanisms /  Immunometabolism in Tissue Homeostasis and Diseases 
• JOINT MEETINGS: Obesity and Adipose Tissue / MASH Pathogenesis and Therapeutic Approaches 
• Precision Genome Engineering: Translating the Human Genome to the Clinic 
• Tumor Metabolism: Environmental Influences and Therapeutic Vulnerabilities 
• Epigenetics in Development and Disease
• Lipids in Cellular Function and Disease 
• Regenerative Biology of the Female Reproductive System 
•  JOINT MEETINGS: Organoids: Engineering Innovative Approaches for Basic and Translational Insight  / Single Cell Biology 
• Vaccinology: Horizons Across Disease, Demography and Technology 
• Climate Change & Infectious Disease Threats 
  

Meet Our Health Equity Working Group

Ann-Marie La Ronde-Richard, PhD (Chair)

Director & Patient Engagement Lead, Pfizer Early Clinical Sciences

Founder & President, Dominican Health and Education Initiative

Keystone Symposia Scientific Advisory Board Member

Expertise: Metabolic Disease/Patient Engagement

Chanita Hughes-Halbert, PhD 

Vice Chair for Research and Professor, Department of Population and Public Health Sciences

Dr. Arthur and Priscilla Ulene Chair in Women’s Cancer, Keck School of Medicine

Associate Director for Cancer Equity, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California

                                         Expertise: Cancer

Minoli Perera, PharmD, PhD

Associate Professor of Pharmacology

Northwestern University/Feinberg School of Medicine

Expertise: Gemonics/Informatics

Samira Asgari, PhD

Assistant Professor, Genetics and Genomic Sciences

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Keystone Fellow (Class of 2023)

Expertise: Human Genomics of Infectious Diseases

Vinicio de Jesus Perez, MD 

Associate Dean of MD Admissions, Stanford School of Medicine; Professor of Medicine with Tenure (PACCM); Director of Faculty and Fellow Diversity and Inclusion (PACCM); Chair, Diversity Advisory Panel, Stanford School of Medicine; Executive Committee on Admissions, Stanford SOM Faculty Senate; Chair, ATS Pulmonary Circulation Assembly; Member at Large and Diversity Champion, AHA 3CPR Council; Keystone Fellow(2014)

Expertise: Cardiovascular Medicine

See Past Health Equity Programming on the Keypoint Blog & YouTube:

Return to the September 2024 Keypoint Newsletter

About the Author

Heather Gerhart

Heather Gerhart earned her MA in Cultural Sustainability from Goucher College, and brings an understanding of how social science principles can be brought to bear in support of inclusive program design and development. She has worked in support of Keystone Symposia’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion leadership since the inception of the organization’s Diversity in Life Sciences Program in 2007. Previously Keystone Symposia’s Sr. Grant Coordinator and Program Analyst, she helped to found, develop, and acquire funding for the Program in response to biomedical workforce development priorities at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.