Jason Q. Purnell, an assistant professor in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, was named person of the year by the St. Louis American. The free weekly newspaper, focusing on the African American community, has been continuously published since 1928. The newspaper prints 70,200 copies each week that are distributed at more than 800 locations in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
Dr. Purnell was honored for his work as the director of For the Sake of All, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the health and well-being of the African American community and to eliminate racial health disparities. The paper wrote: “For his prescient vision, solid evidence-based data, and the sane steadiness of his mission, we celebrate John Q. Purnell.”
Dr. Purnell joined the faculty at Washington University in 2009. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where he majored in government and philosophy. Dr. Purnell earned a master of public health degree at the University of Rochester in New York and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Ohio State University.
