Faculty Expert Profile

Tanjala Purnell is an epidemiologist and health services researcher with over a decade of research experience focused on patient/family, health care system, and community factors influencing health disparities for adults with chronic diseases, particularly kidney disease, hypertension, and diabetes. She is an assistant professor of cardiovascular disease and clinical epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds a joint faculty appointment in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery.

As associate director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, Purnell co-leads efforts to facilitate novel collaborations between communities, universities, health care delivery systems, government, and the private sector to build collective capacity for achieving health equity in Baltimore. She is also the associate director for Education and Training at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, where she leads the Center’s educational and training programs for scholars working to advance health equity.

Purnell is a native of the Mississippi Delta and a graduate of Tougaloo College. She has received several national and international research honors and has published papers in leading journals, including JAMA and Health Affairs. Purnell is deeply committed to community engagement, teaching, and mentoring, and she speaks often on the impact of COVID-19 and systemic racism on existing health and health care disparities in the United States.