Andrea Stubbs, MPA

For Andrea Stubbs, culturally congruent interventions have been at the core of her partnerships with hard-to-reach minority communities to improve their health status. “My approach to building a network of viable community members is to use the tenets of servant leadership—encouraging diversity of thought, creating a culture of trust, having an unselfish mindset, and fostering leadership,” says Stubbs. These words convey her map toward realistic solutions that have the capacity to gain community trust to create the best opportunity for disease prevention.

Her work in bringing a diverse range of stakeholders to the table has been most extensively demonstrated over 14 years (since Oct. 2006) as Coordinator, then Manager, of the HIV Community Research Program for the St. Jude Comprehensive HIV Prevention and Care Program. In these roles she emphasized translating scientific research efforts into community impact. This perspective fuels her current role as the Administrative Director for the HPV Cancer Prevention Program at St. Jude, where she works to improve human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination uptake in the local community and on a national scale to decrease HPV-related cancers.

Stubbs’s leadership in promoting community action to decrease the burden of disease in communities has been recognized on the local and national levels. Local recognition includes the Visionary Award for West Tennessee, awarded by the Tennessee Public Health Association for an exceptional program working to create a healthy community. She also served for many years as the chairperson of a national group of community coordinators who participated in the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions. In addition, she was tapped to lead the Ending HIV Epidemic initiative for Shelby County, 1 of 48 counties involved nationally.

Stubbs is a Memphis native who relishes in exploring the terrain, restaurant scene, and all-around dazzle of Memphis culture in addition to adventures abroad with her husband, Melvin. She is also a long-standing member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., a 100+ year-old civic organization.

Stubbs holds an MPA from Tennessee State University. She is currently working toward a PhD at the University of Memphis School of Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences.