Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy Through Health Equity: Denise Pouliot to be recognized with Community Champion Award
On Monday, January 19, 2026, the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth will host its annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Awards Luncheon, centered on the theme “I Am the DREAM: The Past, Present, and Future.”
This year’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Awards Luncheon will mark a special milestone with the presentation of the inaugural Community Champion Award to our own Denise Pouliot, honoring her exemplary collaboration with Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Denise, alongside Paul Pouliot, was nominated and selected for this new award in recognition of her sustained commitment to partnership, service, and impact that reflects Dr. King’s principles of equity, justice, and community-centered leadership. Created to acknowledge an external partner whose work has meaningfully advanced the Geisel and Dartmouth Health mission, the Community Champion Award underscores the vital role that collaboration across institutions and communities plays in building more equitable systems of care. Denise’s selection as the award’s first recipient sets a powerful standard for what it means to move shared values into action.
This year’s keynote speaker, Uché Blackstock, brings a powerful and timely voice to that conversation—one that speaks directly to the heart of public health in New Hampshire and beyond.
A Harvard-trained emergency physician with more than 17 years of clinical experience, Dr. Blackstock is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, an organization dedicated to helping health systems move from good intentions to real outcomes. Her work focuses on leadership, strategy, design, and culture transformation—areas that are increasingly critical as public health systems confront widening inequities, workforce strain, and eroding trust.
Her bestselling memoir, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine, weaves together lived experience, institutional history, and a vision for more just systems of care. In her keynote, Dr. Blackstock draws on stories from exam rooms, overnight shifts, and everyday encounters—moments where trust is built or broken—to illustrate how equity is practiced not just through policy, but through human connection.
For public health professionals, advocates, and community leaders, this event offers more than inspiration. It is a call to action: to listen closely, to tell the truth about inequities, to design systems for belonging, and to measure what truly matters. These principles align deeply with the mission of the New Hampshire Public Health Association, as we work to advance evidence-based, equitable public health policies and practices across the state.
Date: Monday, January 19, 2026
Time: 12:00–2:00 PM (Lunch served at 11:30 AM)
Location: DHMC Auditorium E&F
Host: Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth