October 24, 2024

Promoting Equitable Cancer Care and Research in Chicago’s Communities of Color in support of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society – Proceeds from this event will directly support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s vital work funding lifesaving blood cancer research to find a cure and improve the quality of life of patients and their families – Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo (Simbo) Ige, UIC Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda, Dr. Edwin McDonald IV, Tawa Mitchell and Adrian Talbott

City Club event description:

While cancer affects all of us, due to systemic social, environmental, and economic disadvantages, African American and LatinX communities bear a disproportionate burden. Communities of color, including those on the South and West Sides of Chicago, face greater obstacles to cancer prevention, detection, treatment, and survival. This reality results in significantly higher death rates and substantially shorter survival rates for most cancers—a stark and unjust inequality that demands our attention. However, this disparity is not insurmountable.

Join Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Simbo Ige, University of Illinois Chicago Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda, Assistant Professor at University of Chicago Medicine Dr. Edwin McDonald, Member of the Board of Trustees, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Tawa Mitchell and cancer survivor and advocate Adrian Talbott for a meaningful conversation on how we can work to close this gap and promote equitable cancer care.

Speakers

Mayor Brandon Johnson
Brandon Johnson was sworn in as the 57th Mayor of the City of Chicago on May 15, 2023. Mayor Johnson began his career as a public school teacher, first at Jenner Academy in Cabrini-Green and then at Westinghouse College Prep on the West Side, where he experienced firsthand how school closures, unemployment and gun violence impacted his students and their communities. He then went on to become an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, where he led multi-racial coalitions to defend neighborhood schools from privatization, reduce high-stakes standardized testing and expand access to state funding. Mayor Johnson was elected Cook County Commissioner of the 1st District in 2018. During his five years on the Cook County Board, he led efforts to pass the Just Housing Ordinance which prohibited housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated people, legislation to secure legal representation for immigrants facing deportation, and coordinated COVID-19 resources for low-income seniors in nursing homes. In 2018, Mayor Johnson was elected Commissioner of the 1st District of Cook County. Here he led the effort to pass the Just Housing Ordinance, which prohibited housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated people. As commissioner, he also collaborated with colleagues to eliminate the gang database, secure legal representation for immigrants facing deportation and advance recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In the wake of civil uprisings in the summer of 2020, he organized the Cook County Board to commit to the “Budget for Black Lives,” bringing new investments in health care, public transportation, internet access, and affordable housing. Mayor Johnson and his wife Stacie live in the Austin community, where they are raising their children Owen, Ethan and Braedyn.

Marie Lynn Miranda
Marie Lynn Miranda, a nationally renowned leader in higher education and geospatial health informatics, became the 10th chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago in July 2023. She also serves as a faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. Chancellor Miranda brings a focus on access and excellence at scale across UIC’s educational, research, and clinical enterprises. She champions a vision that prioritizes the success of students and seeks to enhance faculty scholarship and UIC’s $500 million research profile.

As chancellor of UIC, Miranda has introduced five strategic priorities essential to UIC’s continued success as Chicago’s only public research university. These priorities reaffirm UIC’s commitment to student success; expand the research profile to position the university at the forefront of innovation and Chicago’s knowledge economy; engage with the region’s communities with a focus on educational and health equity; forge productive partnerships with businesses, nonprofits, and the government sector to create opportunities for faculty and student engagement; and elevate UIC as a destination to recruit and retain world-class faculty and staff. These priorities are advancing the university’s equity-focused mission to provide the broadest access to the highest levels of educational, research, and clinical excellence.

Miranda is also director of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI), a research, education, and outreach organization committed to fostering environments where all people can prosper. The initiative is best known for its work on childhood lead exposure — contributing to the CDC’s decision to set a more protective standard for childhood blood lead levels, developing strategies for combating lead in drinking water, and identifying lead in aviation gasoline as a contributor to elevated blood lead levels. CEHI’s most recent work focuses on racial residential segregation and how segregated neighborhoods experience greater exposure to social and environmental stressors, which drive health and educational disparities. CEHI now calls UIC and Chicago home.

Miranda’s tenure at UIC is also marked by her active involvement in Chicago’s civic life. She serves on the Board of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and The Chicago Network. She also serves on several national boards, including the Doris Duke Foundation, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Institute for Nursing Research, the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, and the Executive Committee of the Board of Hispanic Serving Research Universities.

Before joining UIC, Miranda held leadership roles at several prominent institutions. She served as provost at Notre Dame, where she led the academic response to the COVID-19 pandemic and launched diversity initiatives. At Rice University, as provost she implemented $230 million in strategic investments centered around molecular nanotechnology, data sciences, neuroengineering, inequities and inequalities, and general research competitiveness. At the University of Michigan, she restructured the doctoral program and enhanced alumni relations as dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Miranda started her academic career at Duke University, where she was a faculty member for 21 years and served as director of undergraduate programs for the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Miranda is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Duke University, where she earned a bachelor’s in mathematics and economics and was named a Truman Scholar. She has a PhD and master’s from Harvard University, where she held a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Miranda is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Miranda and her husband, Christopher Geron, are the proud parents of three children, two English Setters, and roughly 500,000 honeybees.

City Club video

Dr. Olusimbo (Simbo) Ige
Dr. Olusimbo (Simbo) Ige’s public health career spans nearly two decades. Before her appointment as the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, she served as the Managing Director of Programs at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Ige oversaw partnerships with health organizations nationwide working towards making public health and health care systems accountable and equitable. She also previously served as the Assistant Commissioner for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she provided oversight to a wide range of programs, including the city’s pandemic response, food security programs, housing and health initiatives, mental health programs, violence prevention, and the Public Health Corps initiative.

Dr. Ige received her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery and her Master of Science in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. She received her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Edwin McDonald
Edwin K. McDonald IV, MD, is dedicated to improving the health of individuals and communities through nutrition education. Dr. McDonald is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. He works with patients with small bowel diseases, obesity and other conditions affecting the digestive system. His work also focuses on health care disparities and colon cancer prevention.

Dr. McDonald’s interest in the effects of nutrition on health and disease stem from his experience with Project Brotherhood —