Stigma produces population health inequities through resource deprivation, social exclusion, and diminished access to care — yet it remains largely absent from mainstream social determinants of health frameworks and the policies designed to address them. This presentation introduces a novel classification framework that positions stigma as a social determinant of health and maps the policy landscape accordingly. Drawing on evidence across stigmatized conditions — including tobacco use, cancer, and other health-related identities — the talk examines how structural, interpersonal, and internalized stigma operate as upstream drivers of health inequity. Attendees will explore how this framework can inform more equitable health policy, clinical practice, and research, and will consider actionable strategies for advancing stigma-informed approaches in their own work.
Learning Objectives: After this webinar, attendees will be able to:
- Articulate how stigma functions as a social determinant of health that produces population-level health inequities through distinct, identifiable mechanisms.
- Apply the Stigma-as-Social-Determinant (SSD) Classification Framework to evaluate how current health policies address — or fail to address — stigma across conditions.
- Identify at least two actionable strategies for integrating stigma-informed approaches into health policy, clinical practice, or research.
This is an event of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA), hosted by the Center for Bioethics.
Speaker(s)
Lisa Carter-Bawa, PhD, MPH, APRN, ANP-C, FAAN, FSBM, is the Director of the Cancer Prevention Precision Control Institute (CPPCI) at Hackensack Meridian Health's Center for Discovery & Innovation and Deputy Associate Director of Community Outreach & Engagement at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. She holds faculty appointments as Professor at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and Georgetown University School of Medicine, and serves as Associate Editor of Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
A behavioral scientist by training, Dr. Carter-Bawa's research centers on lung cancer screening, shared decision-making, health communication, stigma, and health equity. She is nationally recognized for her work illuminating how stigma operates as a social determinant of health, particularly among people who smoke and those at elevated risk for lung cancer. Her Carter-Bawa Stigma as a Social Determinant of Health Framework offers a novel conceptual model for understanding how stigma undermines cancer prevention and control across the care continuum — from screening uptake to treatment decision-making to survivorship.
Dr. Carter-Bawa chairs the Stigma and Nihilism Task Group for the American Cancer Society’s National Lung Cancer Roundtable (NLCRT) and leads efforts to move the field from awareness of lung cancer stigma toward actionable, evidence-based strategies for dismantling it.
Her research portfolio spans over 90 peer-reviewed publications and more than $26 million in extramurally funded research. She developed the Conceptual Model for Lung Cancer Screening Participation as well as LungTalk, an innovative shared decision-making tool for lung cancer screening, and the Lung Cancer Screening Health Belief Scales, a validated instrument that has been translated multiple times for use internationally. She also developed the Stigma as a Social Determinant of Health Framework. Her work is supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and other major funders.
Dr. Carter-Bawa earned her PhD in Nursing Science from the University of Louisville, her MPH from the Yale School of Public Health, and completed postdoctoral training at Indiana University. Before entering academia, she founded MyCare Family Practice in Kentucky – the first nurse practitioner–owned primary care practice in the state – which she operated from 2007 to 2013. She went on to become the first PhD-prepared nurse hired as an attending at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she served from 2018 to 2022.
A Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the Society of Behavioral Medicine, Dr. Carter-Bawa brings both scientific rigor and deep commitment to person-centered care to her work. She is a passionate advocate for person-first language in tobacco-related research and practice, and her scholarship consistently bridges the gap between behavioral science and equitable implementation in real-world clinical and community settings.