[1] Ford earned her doctoral degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied health behaviour.
[1] During her fellowship she identified that African American people who were aware of racism were more proactive in seeking HIV testing and healthcare support than those who were unaware.
She devised a series of outreach programmes for high-risk populations, which looked to communicate the risks of HIV and importance of early diagnosis.
She is the founding Director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice and Health.
[14] She argued that communities of colour were more likely to live near the environmental hazards and pollutants, making them more likely to develop a severe form of coronavirus disease, and they were less likely to have access to affordable healthcare.