The UCSF Center for Health and Community will host its 4th annual academic lecture honoring longtime faculty member and pioneering social scientist Nancy E. Adler, PhD, on Friday, October 16, 2026. The event, which will be held at the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building in San Francisco, will also feature a post-lecture reception for attendees on the building's garden terrace deck.
Noted epidemiologist and author Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, will deliver the hour-long lecture, "What We Need to Think About When We Think About Health" beginning at 10:00 a.m. PDT. The event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required. It will also be streamed live via Zoom.
A leading voice in 21st century population health
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, is the Margaret C. Ryan Dean, and Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health at the Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), as well as vice provost for interdisciplinary initiatives.
As dean of WashU’s first new school in 100 years, Galea is leading the building of a world-class academic institution working to advance solutions to pressing, real-world issues involving infectious disease; mental, global and environmental health; dissemination and implementation science; and other key areas of public health.
A population health scientist and physician, Galea came to WashU from the Boston University School of Public Health, where he was the Robert A. Knox Professor and dean for a decade. Prior to that, he served as the Gelman Professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He also previously held academic and leadership positions at the University of Michigan and at the New York Academy of Medicine.
His tenure as dean of the Boston University School of Public Health was marked by expansion and innovation. The school launched a new master of public health curriculum, an online master of public health program, a public health communication initiative, and lifelong learning and student-alumni mentoring programs, among other initiatives. During his tenure, the school doubled its research funding portfolio and development revenue, developed new centers of excellence, and was continually ranked as a top U.S. public health school.
A prolific writer, author and speaker, Galea’s scholarship lives at the intersection of social and psychiatric epidemiology, with a focus on the behavioral health consequences of trauma. His work has been principally funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several foundations. He has been engaged in more than $100 million of extramurally funded research.
He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and was named one of TIME magazine’s epidemiology innovators. He has received several lifetime achievement awards for his research, including the Michael J. McGinnis Award from the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science, the Wade Hampton Frost and the Rema Lapouse Awards from the American Public Health Association, and the Robert S. Laufer Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress.
Galea was born and raised in Malta. He immigrated to Canada with his family as a teenager and later immigrated to the United States. He earned his medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has practiced medicine in rural and remote parts of the world, including as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders in Somalia.
Honoring the life of a true pioneer in health psychology
Now in its fourth year, the annual lecture recognizes and honors the legacy of social scientist and leading voice in the field of health psychology, Nancy E. Adler, PhD.
Adler, who passed away in 2024, co-authored the foundational textbook of health psychology in 1979 and dedicated her life to understanding the profound link between social factors and health. Her 45-year career at UC San Francisco was marked by a relentless pursuit of understanding how social systems and individual health intertwine.
Prior to her retirement in 2022, Adler served as a vice chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the founding director of the UCSF Center for Health and Community, a hub for interdisciplinary research on social determinants of health. She also directed the National Program Office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Evidence for Action Program, which supports research on policies and programs that aim to improve population health and promote health equity.
Adler's pioneering work on income inequality, stress, and cardiovascular disease challenged the notion of health as solely a matter of individual choices and genetics. She coined the term "psychosocial pathways" to describe the mechanisms by which social factors like discrimination and lack of resources get under the skin to affect our physical well-being. She also authored more than 400 articles, many of which became cornerstones of public health research.
As director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health for 15 years, Adler influenced the NIH agenda by organizing a scientific meeting attended by more than 400 researchers and staff, contributing fundamental concepts and approaches to studying the mechanisms responsible for health disparities. In 2007, she led the development of "Reaching for a Healthier Life", a report which mapped out the essential facts of socioeconomic status and health in the United States for policymakers, health professionals, and the general public.
One of her most enduring contributions is the MacArthur "Ladder," a simple scale that measures an individual's subjective sense of social status. This one-to-ten ranking, born out of a MacArthur Foundation working group, has become a powerful tool in public health research, revealing a strong correlation between low social status and increased disease risk.
Renowned for her humility and deep sense of gratitude, Adler had an unwavering commitment to social justice. She was a fierce advocate for marginalized communities and worked tirelessly to dismantle inequities in health care.
