Get to know the team:  Serwaa Omowale, PhD, LMSW, MPH

By Wes Gibson

Serwaa Omowale, PhD, LMSW, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Management, Policy, and Community Health at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health joined the Center for Health Equity (CHE) in January 2025. As a licensed social worker and public health scholar, Omowale brings a unique perspective to the CHE’s research portfolio.

In 2008, she graduated with a master’s in social work from the University of Pittsburgh and worked in case management as a geriatric-trained social worker. In 2013, while working with Harris Health System’s Centering Pregnancy Program, she developed a passion for addressing maternal and child health disparities. This experience revealed that Black community members have a higher rate of preterm births and infant mortality.¹The documentary Unnatural Causes, which also highlights these disparities, further ignited her drive to pursue more education to address these issues.

In 2017, she returned to University of Pittsburgh to obtain a PhD in Social Work and MPH in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. After graduating in 2021, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow with the School of Medicine for the California Preterm Birth Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco.

Omowale would later join UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in 2023. Her current research interests are rooted in women’s health with a focus on eliminating racial disparities and achieving health equity in maternal mortality and morbidity, infant mortality, and preterm birth incidence and outcomes. Other research agenda items include work/employment as a social determinant of health and its impact on racial disparities in maternal health and birth outcomes and interventions that reduce racial disparities in pregnancy and birth outcomes.

During her time at UTHealth Houston, she’s contributed repertoire extensively globally and locally within these areas of interest.

Selected as a 2024 LEAD Global Training Fellow, she traveled to Uganda and South Africa for a 10-week training to gain skills in leading multi-disciplinary research focused on health disparities in low-resource communities. Her work also included attending forums, collaborating with international researchers, and focusing on maternal and infant health in Sub-Saharan Africa. Omowale also works internationally on teen pregnancy, where she’s authored three blog entries related to this topic*.

Currently she leads, “The SWADDLE Study: Improve Maternal and Infant Health for Black Families,” which aims to increase access to mental health and social services during pregnancy and the postpartum period, improve maternal care, and integrate community-level care with care provided by health systems by pairing social workers and doulas to reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes among Black women. 

As a native Houstonian and having grown up in Kashmere Gardens and Settegast, two of the most impoverished communities in Houston, she directly witnessed the effects that health inequities have on communities. “Over twenty years later the communities I grew up in still experience health disparities and poverty. This has been the motivation for my career in social work and public health.  I am happy to return to my hometown to contribute to the goal of health equity for my childhood communities and greater Houston.” 

Omowale’s work plays a pivotal role fulfilling the CHE’s mission of envisioning a world populated by healthy people across flourishing communities. We are thrilled to have her join the team. 

*To read more about Omowale’s work in South Africa, read her blog entries here:

• https://sites.wustl.edu/lead/power-privilege-and-identity-in-the-global-health-space/
• https://sites.wustl.edu/lead/unjanithe-greeting-of-durban-south-africa/
• https://sites.wustl.edu/lead/the-sun-has-set-in-kzn-for-now/

1.     Hoyert, D. L. (2023). Maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2021. National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2021/maternal-mortality-rates-2021.htm [1].