Generous Gift Bolsters Diversity & Inclusion

The Yale School of Public Health’s ongoing efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion received a substantial boost with a generous donation from Dr. Pilar Vargas and her husband, Dean Sten H. Vermund.

The gift, which creates an endowed fund exclusively dedicated to school DEI efforts, is the latest of several contributions towards The Yale School of Public Health’s ongoing efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion received a substantial boost with a generous donation from Dr. Pilar Vargas and her husband, Dean Sten H. Vermund.

Pilar Vargas’ grandparents, a farm family from Isabela, Puerto Rico, instilled in the family a deep respect for and interest in education. Pedro Vargas would go on to become the first of 11 physicians to carry the Vargas family name.

“Being from rural Puerto Rico, Pedro Vargas cared very deeply for the people there and he paid it forward,” said Vermund, a pediatrician, infectious disease epidemiologist and Yale’s Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health.

The mission of the new fund is to “Ensure that the (Yale School of Public Health) is a place where students, faculty, and staff are free to explore the breadth of their intellectual curiosity, the depth of their humanity and the potential of their scholarship, research, work and practice.”

Vermund has partnered with the faculty to make DEI a core pillar of the school. In 2019, he appointed Associate Professor Mayur Desai, M.P.H. ’94, Ph.D. ’97, as the school’s inaugural associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. Other YSPH initiatives include new Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences faculty in the academic field of racism and health, spearheaded by Department Chair and Professor Trace Kershaw; a new social justice curriculum concentration, directed by Associate Professor Danya Keene, and deeper engagement of alumni (Emerging Majority Affairs Committee) and students (Emerging Majority Student Association) in guiding the school in its DEI efforts. Anyone interested in contributing to the new DEI fund or any of the scholarships supporting diverse students at YSPH should contact Senior Director of Development and Alumni Affairs Connie Evans at cornelia.evans@yale.edu.