Ronny Bell, PhD, MS

Professor of Social Sciences and Health Policy at the Wake Forest School of Medicine

Ronny Bell, PhD, MS is Professor of Social Sciences and Health Policy in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.  Dr. Bell is also Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement and Director of the Office of Cancer Health Equity at the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center.  Dr. Bell received his undergraduate degree in Public Health Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health (1985) and his Master’s (1988) and Doctorate (1993) in Foods and Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Dr. Bell completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Gerontology and completed a Master’s in Epidemiology (1996) from the Wake Forest School of Medicine.  From 1996 – 2016, Dr. Bell was a member of the faculty in the Department of Epidemiology at Wake Forest, and from 2006 – 2016, he served as Director of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity.  From 2016 – 2020, Dr. Bell served as Chair of the Department of Public Health in the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and Program Director for the MPH program.

Dr. Bell is a native of Pembroke, NC and is an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe of eastern North Carolina, and currently serves a Chair of the North Carolina American Indian Health Board.  He also serves as Co-chair of the Prevention Subcommittee of the North Carolina Advisory Committee on Cancer Coordination and Control.  He also serves as a member of the UNC Gillings Practice Advisory Committee.  In 2019, he was appointed as Scientific Co-Editor for the North Carolina Medical Journal.  He previously served as Chair of the North Carolina Diabetes Advisory Council and the Healthy North Carolina 2030 Task Force.

IREACH Programs

Projects

Ronny Bell