Dr. Donna A. Patterson, Carnegie Fellow and International Security Fellow, is Chair of the Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy at Delaware State University. She is also the Director of Africana Studies, and she teaches part time for the Department of Public Health. Patterson was a 2016 Carnegie Fellow and held a two-year International Security fellowship at New America.
Dr. Patterson specializes in African and African Diaspora Studies, global health, history of medicine, politics, pharmaceutical markets, epidemics, and gender. Her book Pharmacy in Senegal: Gender, Healing, and Entrepreneurship was published in 2015. Pharmacy in Senegal was featured in NPR and in Pharmacy Times and won the inaugural book club award for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Global Health Now.
Patterson has recently written and co-authored work on COVID-19, women and politics in Africa, and on SDGs. She is currently completing a book on the 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic. Dr. Patterson is on the editorial advisory boards of Africa Today and the World Medical and Health Policy journal. She is also an Associate Review Editor at the American Historical Review and the inaugural editor of the new book series Routledge Research in Health and Healing in Africa and the African Diaspora. In addition, she has published articles on the intersections of gender, entrepreneurship, and pharmacy practice and on Ebola in the Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved, and Anthropologie et Santé.
Patterson regularly participates in meetings in the U.S. and abroad on global health, epidemics, security, race, health equity, and African politics. For instance, Dr. Patterson moderated a panel on African Diaspora Equity in Nairobi, Kenya for UNFPA. In addition, she has talked about the implications of emerging COVID-19 policy and response in events hosted by Arizona State University and the University of London. Her media commentary on global health, pandemics, international security, and current events has appeared at Slate, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Christian Science Monitor, ABC-47, Huffington Post, Foreign Policy, SCMP, Vox, KJZZ (Phoenix NPR), Delaware Public Media, the Appeal, Delaware State News, the New America Weekly, and in other outlets.
In addition to New America fellowships, Patterson has received fellowships from Fulbright IIE, the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), the Woodrow Wilson Center, Princeton University, the American Historical Association, and the West African Research Association.
Previously, she worked for a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. and taught at Wellesley College. For more information, visit her website; for speaking engagements, contact CCMNT Speakers.