Tabia Henry Akintobi

Morehouse School of Medicine

Biographical Abstracts

Dr. Tabia Henry Akintobi, professor and chair of Community Health and Preventive Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine, earned her Ph.D. in public health from the University of South Florida College of Public Health. A globally recognized health equity champion and social behavioral scientist, she leads translational research and participatory evaluations addressing health disparities and advancing community health transformation. She serves as principal investigator of the CDC-funded Prevention Research Center and leads the NIH-funded Georgia Community Engaged Alliance.

A pioneer in academic-community partnership equity, she has advanced a governance structure design that holds academic institutions accountable for co-creating research responsive to community priorities and for translating findings into action. She also champions a scholarship philosophy and funding mechanism developed with colleagues at Morehouse School of Medicine that she has helped incentivize community integration across the full translational research continuum. An extensively published scholar, she co-authored/edited The Morehouse Model and Community-Centered Public Health and co-authored the CDC-NIH Principles of Community Engagement Primer (2nd and 3rd editions). As associate dean for community engagement, her partnership-building and institutional collaboration earned the institution national recognition, including the Carnegie Community Engagement Reclassification (2019 and 2026), and the Josiah Macy Inaugural Award for Excellence in Social Mission.

Areas of Expertise

• Community-engaged research
• Community-based participatory research
• Community-engaged translational research
• Community-campus partnership equity