Shekinah A. Fashaw-Walters, Ph.D.

Shekinah A. Fashaw-Walters, PhD, is an Professor in Assistant Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a health services researcher whose program of research focuses on understanding the inequities in aging while elucidating the roles of racism, place, and policies in the generation and reinforcement of health inequities within aging care access, quality, and outcomes. Her NIH-funded work has been published in numerous high-impact journals and featured in several national news outlets. Dr. Fashaw-Walters is AcademyHealth’s 2024 Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader, a 2024 NIMHD Health Disparities Research Institute Scholar, a 2022 NIA Butler-Williams Scholar, a former faculty scholar with the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory, an Editorial Board member at The Gerontologist, and a member of AcademyHealth’s Board of Directors. Dr. Fashaw-Walters earned her PhD in health services research from Brown University, a Master of Science in public health from UNC Chapel Hill’s Department of Health Policy and Management in the Gillings School of Global Public Health, and her Bachelor of Science from the University of Central Florida. She envisions a society where the strength, autonomy, dignity, and independence of all older adults are enhanced by policies and practices that promote healthy and equitable aging. And to get there, as she says, “there is much work to be done.”