Dr. Azita Emami joined the Yale School of Nursing in 2023 as Dean and Linda Koch Lorimer Professor of Nursing. She is an active researcher, an international advocate for expanding nursing’s role in primary care, and a powerful voice for global equity of healthcare access. Her academic leadership experience spans two countries and 25 years.
Dean Emami serves as a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Yale New Haven Hospital, and also serves on several professional boards and committees. She was a U.S. leader of the international Nursing Now initiative, a three-year global campaign (2018-2020) in collaboration with the International Council of Nurses and the World Health Organization that raised the visibility, status, and education opportunities of nurses worldwide.
Equity of opportunity in nursing education is a focal point for Dean Emami, who has been a national leader in developing efforts directed at making diversity, equity and inclusion a priority at schools of nursing. She initiated the creation of the nation’s first Center for Antiracism in Nursing, and she has written and spoken in numerous professional settings to advocate for health equity and make visible the role of racial injustice and other social determinants as root causes of disparities in health outcomes and barriers to health care access for all.