Jennifer Dyer, Ph.D.

Jenny Eaton Dyer, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of Hope Through Healing Hands, a Nashville-based global health organization, founded and chaired by Senator Bill Frist, M.D., committed to improving the quality of life for communities around the world using health as a currency for peace. As such, she directs the Faith-Based Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children Worldwide with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  

Dyer also currently teaches Global Health Politics and Policy as a Lecturer in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. In the Fall 2012, she taught Southern Religion and Culture in Vanderbilt’s Department of Religious Studies.

Dyer formerly served as the National Faith Outreach Director for the DATA Foundation and The ONE Campaign, Bono’s organization, from 2003-2008. In this role, she worked with religious leaders, authors, artists, and other faith-based leaders to promote awareness and advocacy for extreme poverty and global AIDS issues.

Dyer has written several academic articles and opinion pieces on the intersection of religion and health. She is a contributor of Why Save Africa: Answers from around the World (2011) and a co-compiler of The aWAKE Project: Uniting Against the African AIDS Crisis (2002) and The Mother & Child Project: Raising Our Voices for Health and Hope (2015).

She also has been published in TIME, Forbes.com, Huffington Post, Roll Call, Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics, Christian Post, Dallas Morning News, and The Tennessean.

Dyer holds a B.A. in Religion from Samford University (1999), a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt Divinity School (2001), and a Ph.D. in History and Critical Theories of Religion from Vanderbilt University (2007).