Alan L. Wells, PhD, MPH

Alan Lee Wells began his journey for social justice and health equity as an HIV/AIDS activist in the 1990s.  He received a BA in Psychology and Medical Anthropology from the University of Houston and a Masters in International and Family Health and a Doctorate in Community Health Sciences from the University of Texas School of Public Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.  In Texas, he completed 2 fellowships in clinical ethics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and was a Foreign Language Area Specialist (FLAS) scholar in Hindi at the American Institute of Indian Studies.  He began his academic career as a senior research associate at the American Medical Association (AMA) in Chicago and developed a collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) that delivered continuing medical education and community educational events supporting the USHMM special exhibition entitled “Deadly Medicine, Creating the Master Race” in the US and Israel. 

He worked on the first AMA LGBT Advisory Committee initiating policy change and programs to support inclusion and research for LGBT populations in 2003.  Dr. Wells completed a National Research Service Award NIH postdoctoral fellowship in community-based participatory research (CBPR) at the Medical College of Wisconsin where he stayed to serve as an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine.  He served as the Director of Research of the Division of Health, Humanities and Society at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University in Miami until 2019.  He currently lives in Macon GA where he served as an Associate Professor in Community Medicine at the Mercer University School of Medicine.  His areas of expertise include community partnership development, addressing racism in medicine and public health, and LGBTQ health.