The Bard Prison Initiative And Me: An Insider’s Look at College Behind Bars

FAITH + WORKS is still on! Join us on Zoom to hear Dr. Bob Fullilove speak on the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) and his 10 years of experience teaching college-level courses in three prisons that are part of BPI. BPI students demonstrate every day the manner in which education in a prison setting is both reformative and redemptive.

Dr Fullilove has authored numerous articles in the area of minority health. From 1995 to 2001, he served on the Board of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the National Academy of Sciences. Since 1996, he has served on five IOM study committees that have produced reports on a variety of topics including substance abuse and addiction, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and damp indoor spaces and health. In 2003 he was designated a National Associate of the National Academies of Science. In 1998 he was appointed to the Advisory Committee on HIV and STD Prevention (ACHSP) at the Centers for Disease Control, and in July, 2000, he became the committee’s co-chair. Finally, between 2004-2007, he served on the National Advisory Council for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. Since 2010, he has been teaching public health courses in six New York State prisons that are part of the Bard College Prison Initiative (BPI) and serves as the Senior Advisor to BPI’s public health program.

Dr Fullilove serves on the editorial boards of the journals Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and the Journal of Public Health Policy. He has been awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at the Mailman School of Public Health three times (in 1995, 2001, and 2013), and in May, 2002, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education.