Ala Stanford, founder of Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, joins Penn

Ala Stanford, whose work on health equity issues in Philadelphia during the COVID-19 pandemic received national accolades, has joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Montgomery County surgeon will teach as a professor in the School of Arts and Sciences, conduct research in the Annenberg School for Communication, and lead community outreach for the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, which is led by Nobel Prize winner Drew Weissman.

Stanford founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium to help disseminate tests and vaccines during the pandemic. She was later appointed the Mid-Atlantic regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a position that she left in May 2023.

She continues to have a leadership role in the Dr. Ala Stanford’s Center for Health Equity, a North Philadelphia clinic that grew out of her COVID-19 vaccine work. She wrote a memoir that also highlights her work during the pandemic: Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude, and a Surgeon’s Fight for Health Justice, which will be published by Simon & Schuster next month.

Stanford said working at Penn gives her a chance to have the most impact.

“We were able to do a lot with my bank account, GoFundMe, and later some state and local funds,” she said. “Imagine what we can do with the backing of an institution like Penn.”

A series of chance encounters brought her Penn. While working at HHS, Stanford was invited to speak to first-generation college students at Penn planning careers in medicine about the intersection of biology and health equity.

“I was really inspired by the students. They were so inquisitive,” she said. “I loved that.”

After hearing her talk, a Penn professor in attendance asked her if she ever considered teaching. That started conversations that ultimately led to her appointments in three Penn schools.

In another chance encounter, Stanford was seated by Weissman at a dinner before her TEDx Talk at Penn last summer.

Weissman’s mRNA research powered the technology in the COVID-19 vaccines, but he lamented to Stanford that it doesn’t matter what vaccines or medications his lab develops if people don’t trust it enough to use them, she recalled.

It was a concern that she has experience addressing. At the height of the pandemic, the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium was a reliable source of information, especially in the Black community.

Her conversation with Weissman led to a position in his lab, overseeing community outreach, and the research appointment at the school for communication.

At Penn, she is excited to share with a younger generation her ideas for how to run public health campaigns and health programs — and also maintain her board certification as an adult and pediatric surgeon.

“I’m having more significance in the world now than in the operating room taking care of one patient at a time,” she said.