Novant Health’s Yele Aluko to give annual Maxwell-Roddey Distinguished Africana Lecture

Yele Aluko, senior vice president of Novant Health and medical director of the Novant Health Heart and Vascular Institute, will present “North Carolina’s Rejection of Medicaid Expansion: Politicizing the Health of Our Society” at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 22, in the Rowe Arts Building, Room 130. A reception will follow Aluko’s presentation, which is free and open to the public.

As a physician, Aluko specializes in complex coronary interventions, and he is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. He also is a vocal, visible advocate in the effort to address the issue of health care disparities within racial, ethnic and gender minorities in the United States.

He is a past board member of the Association of Black Cardiologists, a past president and founding member of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas and a founding member of the Carolinas Association for Community Health Equity. For his work, advocacy and civic leadership, Aluko has received the Award of Excellence from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (2009), the Richard Vinroot International Achievement Award (2010) and the Health Hero Award from Bobcats Sports and Entertainment Inc. (2012). In 2011, the Charlotte Post Foundation presented him with a Luminary Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Bertha Maxwell-Roddey Distinguished Africana Lecture, sponsored by the Africana Studies Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, honors its namesake for her pioneering contributions to the development of Africana studies as an academic discipline at UNC Charlotte as the department’s founding chair; she also helped build black cultural institutions in the greater Charlotte area and nationally.