Lucille Holcomb Webb
Strengthening the Black Family
Founder
Biographical Abstracts
Lucille Webb has advanced a community-driven and community-centered model of community-engaged scholarship that has had an impact on communities and institutions in North Carolina and across the country for more than 30 years. In 1980, she founded Strengthening the Black Family (STBF), Inc., in Raleigh, NC, a coalition of more than 40 members, seeking to bring about positive changes in the community with specific emphasis on black families in Wake County.
Her collaboration with university partners at UNC-Chapel Hill has been extensive, representing STBF on the North Carolina Coalition of the Kellogg Foundation’s Community-Based Public Health Initiative, teaching and mentoring students and faculty with the community competencies they need to be successful community-engaged scholars; serving on the program’s National Advisory Committee and a state-wide Institutional Review Board; chairing the executive committee for the Centers for Disease Prevention and Controls’ Project DIRECT; and serving as the Community Course Director for the Faculty Engaged Scholars Program from 2008-2012. Balancing these many roles, her insights, guidance, and skill in forming successful community-academic partnerships were key to the success of these programs and to advancing knowledge in addressing health disparities.
In 2006, the National Community-Based Organization Network of the Community-Based Public Health Caucus of the American Public Health Association established the Lucille Webb Award, honoring “an individual based in a local, community-based organization or agency who exemplifies community leadership in Community-Based Public Health and who has made a significant contribution to community-based public health at the local level.”
Areas of Expertise
- Community-based public health
- Health disparities and Black families
- Community-based participatory research