Debra Bill, PhD

Professor, Department of Health
DBill@wcupa.edu
610-436-6941

Biography

Dr. Debra Bill is a Professor in the Department of Health. She joined the faculty in the Department of Health as an Assistant Professor in 1999 after completing her doctorate in Health Studies/Health Education from Temple University. Prior to accepting her current position, she worked for twenty years as a program planning /development and evaluation specialist in health education, designing, implementing and evaluating health programs for diverse learners in schools, community's workplaces and global settings. She worked on several research grants and was Principle Investigator of an NIH funded Educational Multi-purpose Arthritis Grant at the University of Connecticut Medical Center.

She teaches both undergraduate and graduate public health courses, with primary MPH teaching responsibilities in transcultural health, global health promotion, health program planning, and community health. Her specialty area of expertise is culture and health. She has been a leader in applying the promotora de salud model to educate migrant/immigrant communities about maternal and child health.

She has worked on a number of international projects with community partners and has done extensive fieldwork in Guanajuato, Mexico for the past twelve years. She has also done fieldwork with her students and supervised community work in Kennett Square PA with migrant Latino farm families, Jamaica, Greece, Lithuania, Iraq, and the Dominican Republic. Dr. Bill has developed and taught international health immersion courses to Mexico and Jamaica for West Chester University public health students. She was the first recipient of the Open Society Award for Social Justice in 2009 by the National Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE). She has chaired the SOPHE Anthropology and Public Health sections for a number of years.

Dr. Bill has authored and co-authored a number of peer-reviewed articles on health equity and health disparity issues presented at international, national, and state-wide conferences. She is currently a member of the American Public Health Education, and American Anthropological Association.

Gerontology Courses Taught

• HEA 645: Global Health an Aging (3 Credits)

Read more Faculty Profiles