Historic faculty hiring: Meet Nathaniel Woodard

I’m a public health researcher working to promote health equity, often in the context of cancer-related outcomes. My research aims to understand the complex drivers of health inequities and address them through evidence-based interventions. My primary focus is to employ community-based methods to design, implement and evaluate sustainable interventions to improve quality of life, improve treatment outcomes and reduce cancer health disparities, with a particular emphasis on Black and African American populations.

I’ve been interested in health and what enables someone to engage in healthy or unhealthy behaviors for a long time, since I was in middle school. Even in high school, I’d offer informal coaching on exercise and nutrition for teammates and friends who wanted to be healthier. That’s why I went into public health and health behavior: I wanted to do research that allows me to engage with the community, listen to the issues they’re facing and do work that creates positive change for them.

I was born in Buffalo, the first house we were in was on Peach Street. I’ve been gone for the last 10 years as I earned my bachelor’s degree in public health and psychology from the University of Rochester and my master’s degree and PhD in behavioral and community health from the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Most recently, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I researched cancer survivorship and cancer outcomes.

I wanted to work at UB because it’s a public R1 institution with a very important role in the local community. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the ability to go to school at a reduced cost, so it’s really important to me to work for a university that prioritizes research and exposing students to collaborative research while also providing more accessible forms of higher education. It’s great to make the return home after a decade and be a part of the mission to improve health and health outcomes for folks like those I grew up with in Buffalo.

UB is a big place — a lot of people are doing great work with their own networks and collaborations. I didn’t teach in the fall, but I have begun working with a few master’s students on research projects. These students are engaged, passionate, hard-working and willing to put in the time to do community-based work. The faculty is phenomenal, as well. Everyone is super kind and incredibly supportive. It’s been a great first few months here, and I’m looking forward to the time here to come.

Being fairly new to UB, in the first few months I’ve focused some on developing connections and networks in the community. I’ve done a lot of research and outreach to community organizations and leaders to identify the important work people are already doing. I’m starting some work with the Buffalo Center for Health Equity, for example. We have common goals that they’re already working to address in the community. I’ve connected with them and we’re discussing more about how we can collaborate to achieve these goals.

It’s great to join UB during this time. There were so many other new hires at orientation and related onboarding events, which provided plenty of opportunities to engage with other new incoming faculty and experience this period together.

There have already been plenty of serendipitous moments for me based on those relationships. We just received a notice of funding to work on mental health in Buffalo Public Schools, which I worked on with a Graduate School of Education faculty member I met during orientation. We were seated together and hit it off. When I was thinking about this project a few weeks later, it suddenly dawned on me that I could reach out to them for their expertise and assistance. We ended up writing the application together and just recently received notice of the award.

I moved to Buffalo in August, right before I started with UB. There are a lot of changes since I left a decade ago — and plenty of new restaurants to try — but I’ve changed, too. I’m looking forward to continuing to build relationships that positively impact the community. Buffalo has a vibrant community and UB is a large part of that.