Deborah Padgett Named 2011-12 Director of the Global Health Leadership Concentration for the NYU Master in Public Health Program

Robert Berne, executive vice president for health at NYU, recently announced that Professor Deborah Padgett has been appointed as the 2011-12 director of the Global Health Leadership concentration for the NYU Master of Public Health program, effective in September. He noted, "I am confident that Dr. Padgett's long-standing commitment to the program, public health expertise, and leadership skills will be an asset to our innovative program over the coming academic year."

Padgett earned her doctorate in anthropology and a master's degree in public health. She is internationally known for her expertise in qualitative methods as well as her federally funded research on services for homeless persons with serious mental illness. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she is the editor of The Qualitative Research Experience (2004) and author of Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research (2nd ed. 2008), and the upcoming Qualitative and Mixed Methods in Public Health (2012).

Padgett has been an exceptional mentor to doctoral students and junior faculty and, this summer, began an annual qualitative methods workshop held at the Silver School. In 2010, she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Global Public Health program where she is a faculty instructor and longstanding member of the Governance Committee. In 2011 she was named to the second class of the prestigious American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. In addition to her National Institute of Mental Health-funded studies, Padgett is collaborating on community-based cancer prevention research with colleagues at Einstein Medical Center in the Bronx, New York.