Presented by: Octavia Peck Palmer, PhD

Octavia M. Peck Palmer is the President of the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine (ADLM, formerly the American Association of Clinical Chemistry). She earned her Ph.D. in Physiology from The Medical University of South in Charleston, South Carolina. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Clinical Chemistry at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Missouri. On July 1, 2023, Octavia was appointed the inaugural Vice Chair of Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for the Department of Pathology She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, with secondary faculty appointments within the Critical Care Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science departments. 

She is a board-certified clinical chemist and serves as the Division Director of Clinical Chemistry and medical director of two large CAP-accredited clinical laboratories and three STAT clinical laboratories for which she provides consultative and patient test result interpretation for healthcare providers within the healthcare organization. She is academically unique as she conducts translational research (focused on biological mediators of sepsis), teaches, mentors, and directs clinical laboratories. She has over 100 publications, including peer-reviewed manuscripts, textbooks, magazine articles, podcasts, and media interviews, and has delivered national and international grand rounds and plenary sessions. Her recent journal publications focus on laboratory medicine leading the efforts to ensure health equity and include Recognizing Laboratory Medicine's Collabortive Role in Identifying and Eliminating Health Disparities in the Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine; AACC/National Kidney Foundation Guidance Document on Improving Equity in Chronic Kidney Disease Care in the Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine; Reconsidering the use of race adjustments in maternal serum screening in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology; and Feasibility of Embedding a Scalable, Virtually Enabled Biorepository in the Electronic Health Record for Precision Medicine in JAMA Network Open. She received the 2020 Outstanding Teaching in clinical Pathology Award from the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh and the 2022 American Association of Clinical Chemistry s society for Young clinical Laboratonians Mentoring Award. She was named to The Pathologists Power List and spotlighted as the next generation of laboratory medicine - the "rising stars" of pathology. 

The focus of the Spring 2024 Epidemiology Seminar Series is Health Equity & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Students and GSR’s attending in person should swipe their Panther ID at the bottom entrance to G23 to register their attendance.
Students should come prepared with engaging questions for the presenters.
Students not registered for the course, postdocs, & faculty are welcome to participate. 
Course Director: Tiffany Gary-Webb, PhD, MHS