Ronny Antonio Bell, associate professor at Wake Forest University, has been selected by Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez to serve on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Advisory Committee on the American Indian and Alaska Native population.

     As a member of the nine-person committee, the Greensboro, N.C., resident will advise the Census Bureau on the new American Community Survey and ways to achieve a more accurate count of the American Indian and Alaska Native population in the 2010 Census.

     Bell is an associate professor in Public Health Sciences at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. He has an extensive research background in the fields of health, nutrition and epidemiology related to American Indians. He has served on several national and state committees relating to public health and was the chair of the American Indian Health Task Force for North Carolina. Bell is a member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe.

     Five race and ethnic advisory committees — African-American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Hispanic, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander — advise the Census Bureau on issues affecting minority populations. The committees are assembled from the public at large and representatives of national, state, local and tribal entities, as well as nonprofit and private sector organizations. Members of the committees are academicians, community leaders, policy makers and others interested in an accurate count for their communities.