Dr. Diane Hill Named to Wealth Disparity Task Force Established by NJ Governor Phil Murphy
Dr. Diane Hill, assistant professor of professional practice at the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) and assistant chancellor for University-Community Partnerships at Rutgers University–Newark, has been named a member of the Wealth Disparity Task Force established by NJ Governor Phil Murphy.
The task force, which has Rutgers University President Dr. Jonathan Holloway as one of the co-chairs, will advise the Murphy Administration on strategies aimed at addressing the various causes and effects of wealth disparity in New Jersey. It will consist of working groups on the economy, housing, criminal justice, education, and health, and will create comprehensive strategies and solutions to achieve a fairer distribution of wealth in New Jersey.
Dr. Hill has devoted her professional career to helping the state’s disenfranchised and underserved residents achieve educational, economic, and health equity. In recent months, She has been awarded various grants to further services to communities in New Jersey. She was part of a team at the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) at Rutgers University that received a $5 million National Institutes of Health grant to launch outreach campaigns and expand access to COVID-19 testing for underserved and vulnerable communities in New Jersey. She was also awarded a Rutgers Global Health Institute Global Health Seed Grant for the initiative "Transdisciplinary Intergenerational Community Engagement Model for Senior Health Promotion in Greater Newark," which seeks to support the city’s senior population by launching a health promotion program. Additionally, she was awarded a grant from ScreenNJ to support the Center for Health Equity and Community Engagement/Advocates for Healthy Living Initiative’s (AHLI) for Life Cancer Screening Campaign to improve colorectal and/or lung cancer screening rates among Greater Newark senior citizens. AHLI for Life offers both in-person and virtual programs that complement AHLI’s Senior Health Connect, a program to help older adults become more proficient in using digital technology and the internet.
Dr. Hill's research interests include advancing community engagement in higher education, with special emphasis on university-community partnerships in urban universities, school-based youth college and career development and engagement demonstration models, and community-based participatory research. She currently serves as the director of the Rutgers Center for Health Equity and Community Engagement (CHECE) which aims to build upon proven effective community engagement strategies developed by Rutgers University–Newark's Office of University-Community Partnerships (OUCP) and the scholarship and knowledge-based services that are the hallmarks of Rutgers SPAA.