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By Dan Nonte, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-4314
Posted 6-2-09
GREENSBORO, N.C. — The School of Human Environmental Sciences has honored two alumni – Ronny Bell, director of the Maya Angelou Research Center on Minority Health, and Sue Ormond Singleton, who helped start an orphanage in Cambodia – with its 2009 Distinguished Alumni Awards.
Bell has dedicated himself to making high-quality medical care available to underserved populations. After earning his bachelor’s degree in public health nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1985, he came to UNCG to earn his master’s degree in 1993 and his doctorate in 1998, both in nutrition.
A member of the Lumbee tribe, he used his doctoral research to explore how a community-based nutrition education program might lower dietary cancer risks in Lumbee Indian women in Robeson County. He has dedicated much of his subsequent work to researching disparities in health in African American, American Indian and Hispanic populations.
In 2007, he was named director of the Maya Angelou Research Center on Minority Health, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, which was established to address racial and ethnic disparities in health status, health care quality and quality of life. He also serves as a tenured professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has been involved in the National Cancer Institute’s Native American Cervical Cancer Prevention Project; the Piedmont Alliance for Cancer Research; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s HEARTQUEST; and the National Institute on Aging’s Rural Nutrition and Health Program.
He is a member of the N.C. American Indian Health Board, a part of the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs. This board is being assembled to become an authoritative source on Indian health and to serve as a strong advocate for the state’s Indian communities.
A native of Dover, N.C., Sue Ormond Singleton graduated from the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now UNCG) in 1959 with a bachelor’s degree in home economics with a concentration in teacher education. She went on to work as an extension agent, a social worker, a high school teacher and a nutrition director for a five-county region in eastern North Carolina, where she implemented a new nutrition program for older adults. She earned two master’s degrees from East Carolina University in 1983 and 1992.
In addition to being service chairperson for the Beaufort County Cancer Society, secretary of the UNCG Alumni Association and an officer with the International Gideon Auxiliary, she volunteered with the Beaufort County Heart Fund and Beaufort County Community Concert Series.
In 1993, she became only the fifth Baptist missionary to arrive in Cambodia, where she taught English in Phnom Penh and the rural town of Kompong Thom. She seized a unique opportunity in 2005 – with funding provided by a couple from Rocky Mount – to help found a much-needed orphanage. Named the Shelter of Love Center and located on 24 acres seven miles from her home, the orphanage is home to 52 children and six sets of house parents. Her dream is to one day take care of 100 children, and to that end a third group home was completed in May 2007.