Lovell Jones, PhD

Lovell Jones, PhD, is currently Founder of the HDEART Consortium, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Health Promotion & Community Health Sciences at Texas A&M School of Public Health and Research Professor at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. Upon on his retirement. Dr. Jones became the first African American to be awarded Emeritus Professor status at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center as well as at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston, making him the first African American in the University of Texas System to hold dual Emeritus Status. He is the former Director of the joint UT MD Anderson Cancer Center/University of Houston Dorothy I. Height Center for Health Equity & Evaluation Research. Dr. Jones has more than 35 years of experience in addressing minority health and the health of the underserved. As a scientist, he has also done extensive research into the relationship between hormones, diet and endocrine responsive tumors and has presented his work both nationally and internationally. He has edited one of the few comprehensive textbooks on this subject: Minorities & Cancer. Dr. Jones has either chaired or co-chaired numerous major events regarding the underserved and cancers, including the American Cancer Society South Central U.S. Regional Hearings on Cancer and the Poor and the1st National African Cancer Education meeting in Abuja, Nigeria. Dr. Jones is co-author of the congressional resolution designating the third full week in April as "National Minority Cancer Awareness Week." For his work, the NIH/National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities was awarded him its Director’s Award for Excellence in Health Disparities. Dr. Jones has also received the Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Award and was selected as one of the top African American Scientist in America by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Jones has been awarded either as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co- PI approximately $40 million in research and/ or educational grants.

In January 2000, Dr. Jones was named the first director of the congressionally mandated Center for Research on Minority Health (CRMH), a multidisciplinary center whose aims were to a) foster research that addresses the causes of health disparities and translates scientific results back to the communities affected by those disparities; b) encourage minority students to pursue careers in the biomedical sciences; and c) increase recruitment and retention of minority and medically underserved populations into clinical trials.