Lorraine Cole, PhD

OWH Home > Working Groups and Committees > Minority Women's Health Panel of Experts > Lorraine Cole, PhD

Chief Executive Officer
YWCA USA
1015 18th Street, NW
Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 467-0801
Fax: (202) 467-0802
cole@ywca.org

Dr. Lorraine Cole is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Black Women's Health Project (NBWHP), the only national organization solely dedicated to ensuring optimum health for Black women across the life span. In this role, she has the overall responsibility for all organizational operations, including public health activities, education programs, health policy development, advocacy, research, and membership services.

Dr. Cole came to the National Black Women's Health Project with solid experiences in minority health and organizational management and a long record of accomplishments in capacity building and program development. She is the former Executive Director of the National Medical Association (NMA), the oldest national organization representing African American physicians. During her leadership tenure, NMA emerged from a period of financial downturn to becoming the strongest in its 105-year history, fiscally and programmatically. Previously, she served as the Executive Director of the Minority Health Professions Foundation, nearly tripling the foundation's portfolio of funded biomedical research in schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine in historically Black institutions. She also had a distinguished tenure of service as Director of Minority Affairs for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association where she developed award-winning programs in multicultural professional education that became national models.

Dr. Lorraine Cole, PhD was recently featured in the October 2004 issue of Ebony Magazine as a leader in improving the health status of Black women worldwide through her work as the president and CEO of the Black Women's Health Imperative. She is the leader of the nations only not-for-profit organization dedicated to this cause. The article discusses her efforts for better legislation on this issue, which then leads to better health among black women. Bringing light to this issue is critical since black women's health has not changed or gotten better over the past 20 years.

Content last updated September 19, 2008.