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Advocate, educator, editor, researcher, nonprofit leader, author, speaker and consultant with deep commitment to public service, health equity, community engagement, and systems-driven solutions.
Renata Schiavo, PhD, MA, CCL, is a global health practitioner and public health/social sciences academic who works at the intersection of public health, healthcare, health equity and the social and structural determinants of health, human rights, health and risk communication, social and behavior change (SBC), system-thinking, and social and behavior change communication (SBCC). She is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, a Principal at Strategies for Equity and Communication Impact (SECI), a women-owned global consultancy; and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health (Taylor & Francis). She is also the course director and lead faculty of a summer professional development program on “Health and Risk Communication in An Interpandemic World: Strategies for A System Thinking and Equity-Driven Approach” at The American University of Rome. She serves as the Founder and Board President on the Board of Directors of Health Equity Initiative, a member-driven nonprofit membership organization, a Senior Editor of the Journal of Health Equity (Taylor & Francis), and on the the editorial board of Health Equity (Mary Anne Liebert). Dr. Schiavo is the author of Health Communication: From Theory to Practice (Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley), now in its second edition, and 70+ publications and 180+ scientific presentations. Renata is a passionate advocate for health, racial, and social equity and a committed voice on the importance of addressing barriers that prevent people from leading healthy and productive lives. She is also a leading proponent and an established practitioner/researcher on the development of community-driven and multi-sectoral solutions and partnerships to address health, equity, human rights, and communication issues. She has been working in the United States, and several countries in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Asia. At Mailman, Dr. Schiavo has been teaching courses on Society, Health Equity and Health Communication; Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR); Health Communication; and Global Trends in Child Health and Development Programs. She is also an affiliate of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and serves as subject matter expert and co-investigator at the Region 2 Public Health Training Center (PHTC) on effective communication, health equity, and community engagement topics. Dr. Schiavo has been actively engaged in the response to COVID-19 both in the United States and around the world. Since the pandemic struck in March 2020, she spearhead Health Equity Initiative's advocacy efforts to make sure health equity stayed on the table during the pandemic and has been leading community engagement efforts and forums to raise the influence of community voices on addressing COVID-19 inequities. In addition, she has collaborated with the Region 2 Public Health Training Center to investigate barriers to responding to COVID-19 in New York State, and to design training modules to promote a community- and equity-driven approach to the COVID-19 response. At SECI, she has been working on building the capacity of public health professionals, community leaders, population health professionals, and health journalists both in the United States and Brazil, to implement a health equity- and human rights-driven lens in pandemic response and recovery efforts. Her work and perspectives on this domain have appeared in Health Promotion Practice, the Journal of Communication in Healthcare, Health Equity, The Washington Post, Reach MD, Elite Daily, and several blogs and podcast programs. Renata has served as a senior consultant/advisor on multiple global health and public health interventions funded by UNICEF, The World Bank, the Rwanda Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ-Brasilia), the Office of Minority Health Resource Center, HHS Office of Minority Health, Safe State Alliance, Solving Kids Cancer, and other U.S. and global organizations. These projects included a communication initiative to address vaccine hesitancy and promote pediatric routine immunization (RI) in Kyrgyzstan; The One Thousand Days in The Land of One Thousand Hills national program in Rwanda to reduce chronic malnutrition and its impact on children and pregnant and breastfeeding women; a global handwashing campaign; a training program to frame diversity, equity, and inclusion in intervention and policy design for injury and violence prevention in the United States; and a national initiative to reduce inequities in infant mortality rates (IMR) within the Black community and other communities in the United States. In addition, she contributed to the design of a therapeutic development initiative for pediatric cancer and is routinely consulted on community-based communication strategies as well as health equity metrics and standards for public health and healthcare interventions and policies and R&D therapeutic targets. Finally, her capacity building, training and workforce development experience includes participants from 400+ organizations. A well-established practitioner and researcher, Dr. Schiavo has served on scientific, expert, and review panels for the National Institute of Health, the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Federation, UNICEF, and the American Public Health Association. Her research, advocacy, and capacity building work has been supported by the Office of Minority Health Resource Center, HHS Office of Minority Health; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the Bank of America Charitable Gift Trust; the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), US DHHS; the Macy's Corporate Foundation; and the World Health Organization. As part of her Child Life clinical practicums and volunteer efforts, Renata has experience providing psychosocial care and opportunities for educational enrichment to families and children from underserved backgrounds at the Ronald McDonald House Family Room at Kings County Hospital and the Reach Out and Read program at Bellevue Hospital, both in New York City, and Save A Child’s Heart in South Africa. Dr. Schiavo has experience in 20+ health and international development areas, including health equity/health inequities and the social, structural and political determinants of health; maternal, newborn, infant, and child health; COVID-19 and other emerging disease outbreaks and epidemics; immunization and vaccine hesitancy; addressing misinformation; health systems strengthening; multi-sectoral partnerships and interventions; community engagement and participatory planning methods; program evaluation; capacity building, training, and workforce development; systematic reviews; qualitative research methods; community-based participatory research (CBPR); community health; chronic malnutrition; cultural competence/humility; CME/CE programs; population health; child life/early childhood development; addressing implicit and institutional bias, and building and restoring trust in science and health information at the community and populations levels. Across projects, Renata has worked with a variety of stakeholders and local communities, including communities of color and immigrant communities in the United States, and low-income groups, refugees, and patients from underserved areas in global settings. Among other projects, she is currently working on a contributed volume on Health Equity: Strategies for Action (Wiley, Fall/ Winter 2024) and also leads The Science of Trust Initiative at the Journal of Communication in Healthcare to encourage research, understanding, and solutions on the global public trust crisis in science, public health, and medicine. Dr. Schiavo received the Distinguished Career Award of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Public Health Education and Health Promotion (PHEHP) section for her "lifetime work to advance health communication and health equity"; was recognized as one of 300 Women Leaders in Global Health by an initiative of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; is an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM); and received a Presidential Citation by the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE). Renata is a member of SheSource; a member and past chair of the APHA PHEHP Health Communication Working Group (HCWG); and an active member of the APHA Public Health Education and Health Promotion (PHEHP) and International Health sections. She serves as Senior Advisor and Past Chair, Feature Sessions, of the APHA Global Public Health Film Festival. Among other international affiliations, Renata is an Associate member of the CORE Group; a member of the UNICEF Communication for Development (C4D)/Social and Behavior Change (SBC) Global Web Roster; and the World Health Organization Strategic Partnerships for International Health Regulations (IHR) and Health Security (SPH) expert database. Dr. Schiavo's diverse background includes past academic positions at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, New York University, Long Island University, and The College of New Jersey; Executive Vice President, Cooney Waters Group (now Health Unlimited); and Head, Corporate and Marketing Communications and Social Responsibility Programs, Rhodia Farma-Brazil (now Sanofi Aventis). She also previously served on the editorial board of Cases in Public Health Communication and Marketing, the advisory board of The Nation’s Health, the APHA official newspaper, and as chief editor of BMC Medicine. In addition to her current role at Health Equity Initiative, her nonprofit management and leadership experience includes past board positions at Solving Kids Cancer, Public Health Foundation Enterprise (now Heluna Health), and the Italian American Committee on Education (IACE), and as an elected voting member of the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association. Early in her career, Dr. Schiavo was a post-doctoral research scientist at Columbia University, and New York University, where she worked on numerous projects in the areas of cancer and cystic fibrosis. She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences (Clinical Biology/Human Genetics concentration) from the University of Naples (Italy) where she completed a thesis on hereditary diseases and genetic polymorphisms, a M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from New York University, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Child Life from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), with an emphasis on family and community systems, trauma in children's life, and research on child life interventions in community and clinical settings. A frequent speaker in U.S. and international settings, Renata is fluent in English, Italian, and Portuguese, and can read and understand Spanish and French. Media experience includes interviews with Bloomberg News, BGI Webseries, BTJ Biotechnology Journal podcasts, Folha de S. Paulo, Radio Nacional Network, Sage Publications Podcasts, The Nation's Health, The Signal, Elite Daily, Inside Science, ReachMD, and The Washington Post, among others.
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