Carmela M. Roybal, Ph.D., MBGPH, MA, is a senior adviser at the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is a research professor and executive director of the Native American Budget and Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico. Roybal is a leading expert on Native American health, policy, and government to government relations. Her research and scholarship examine gender, medicine, indigeneity, and the intersections of state, tribal, and federal policy. Roybal uses data to develop innovative solutions for improving the life chances of Indigenous people in the United States and globally.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico, specializing in medical sociology and in the sociology of race and ethnicity. She is a visiting professor at American University of Sovereign Nations (AUSN), where she received a master’s degree in Bioethics and Global Public Health. Roybal was post-doctoral research fellow at the University College Dublin, Ireland, School of Social Policy, Social Work, and Social Justice, and a doctoral fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at University of New Mexico.

Roybal is a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women; is the treasurer of RC32 Women, Gender, and Society of the International Sociological Association; and is a senior research fellow at the School of Indigenous and Global Studies at AUSN. She also is a founding council member of the American Sociological Association’s Indigenous Peoples and Native Nations Section.