Toni Yancey

Toni (Antronette K.) Yancey, MD, MPH is currently Professor, Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, and Co-Director, UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity. She also directs her department's leadership doctoral degree (DrPH) program. She returned to academia full-time in 2001 after five years in public health practice, first as Director of Public Health for the City of Richmond, VA, and as Director of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Dr. Yancey's primary research interests are in chronic disease prevention and adolescent health promotion, with a particular emphasis on interventions engaging underserved communities. She has authored more than 125 scientific publications, including briefs, book chapters, health promotion videos, and among those, more than 90 peer-reviewed journal articles and editorials. She serves on the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Preventive Medicine, the Journal of Physical Activity and Health, and the American Journal of Health Promotion. She has also generated more than $30 million in extramural funds, including four National Institutes of Health independent investigator (R01, R24) grants as principal investigator.

Dr. Yancey serves on the Board of Directors of the Washington, DC-based Partnership for a Healthier America, the non-profit organization supporting First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign to end the childhood obesity epidemic, and on the Los Angeles County First 5 Commission. She is the immediate past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Public Health Institute (Oakland, CA), with a tenure on that Board of more than a decade, and has also joined the Board of Directors of Action for Healthy Kids (Skokie, IL). Dr. Yancey is currently on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Standing Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention and National Physical Activity Plan Coordinating Committee. She was formerly a member of the USDHHS Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, California Department of Public Health Advisory Committee, IOM Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity and Progress in Preventing Childhood Obesity Committees, and Advisory Committee to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Yancey has received a number of awards and other recognition of her accomplishments, including the California State Assembly's 47th District Woman of the Year and Henry Ford Health System Health Education Achievement & Leadership Awards in 2011, WNBA Los Angeles Sparks Lisa Leslie Inspiring Woman Award, California Public Health Association Joint Health Promotion Award in 2005, California Black Women's Health Project Women Who Dared Award in 2001, and inclusion among the National Medical Fellowships' top 50 scholarship recipients in its 50-year history, Celebrating 50, in 2000.

Dr. Yancey has been quoted, interviewed or had her work featured frequently in the print media, including the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, Investor's Business Daily, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, Reuters, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Orange County Register, the Daily Breeze, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Kansas City Star, the Indianapolis Star, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Sacramento Bee, La Opinion, Oncology News International, the Medical Herald, Time, Newsweek, Ladies Home Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Family Circle, Essence, Parents, Glamour, and a number of other local newspapers; the national and international electronic media, including NPR, ABC, BET, PBS, Discovery Health, CBS Radio, BBC Radio, and CBC Radio; and local network affiliates and broadcasts. Dr. Yancey is an occasional public health commentator for the Los Angeles National Public Radio affiliate, KPCC.

Dr. Yancey completed her undergraduate studies in biochemistry and molecular biology at Northwestern University where she was the starting center on the varsity basketball team, her medical degree at Duke, and her preventive medicine residency/MPH at UCLA. She is a basketball enthusiast and poet/spoken word artist published in the public health journals Preventive Medicine and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and several newspapers. Her book of poetry and art, a collaboration with artist Todd Berrien, An Old Soul with a Young Spirit: Poetry in the era of desegregation recovery, was published in 1997 and sold out of its first printing of 2000. Her spoken word music CD, a collaboration with musicians Ciro Hurtado and Kim Jordan, was released in 2001. Her second book, Instant Recess: Building a Fit Nation – 10 Minutes at a Time (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA), was published in November 2010.