Yonette Thomas, Ph.D.

Yonette Thomas, Ph.D., is science advisor for urban health to the New York Academy of Medicine, a member of the International Society for Urban Health board, and a senior research advisor to the Association of American Geographers. She is a faculty affiliate of the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland College Park, and a voluntary associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine where she teaches social epidemiology. She was formerly the associate vice president for research compliance at Howard University. Previously she served as the chief of the Epidemiology Research Branch and program director for the sociology epidemiology program at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health. She has held faculty appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and in the School of Pharmacy at Howard University. She is a member of the Consortium of Social Science Associations Advisory Committee and the Steering Committee of the National Hispanic Science Network. Her primary research and publications have focused on the social epidemiology of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS and the link with geography, including edited volumes: Geography and Drug Addiction, Crime, HIV, and Health: intersections of Criminal Justice and Public Health Concerns. She has a Ph.D. in medical sociology and demography, with post graduate training in epidemiology.