Newsroom Archive

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the establishment of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations and has named Linda Marc as a member of the committee.

The National Advisory Committee will advise the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, will advise the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race and ethnicity, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other populations.

“We expect that the expertise of this committee will help us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee will help ensure that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The National Advisory Committee members, who serve at the discretion of the Census Bureau director, are chosen to serve based on expertise and knowledge of the cultural patterns, issues and/or statistical needs of hard-to-count populations.

Linda Marc is the education and curriculum development director within the Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center and a research associate in the department of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, and she concurrently holds an appointment as a lecturer in public health practice at the Yale School of Public Health. Marc's ongoing research focuses on postdisaster sexual violence in Haiti, with emphasis on mental health and HIV. She is also a contributing author to a recent book titled, “Social Network and the Mental Health of Haitian Immigrants.” Because of her knowledge and research on Haitians, in 2007 she was selected to serve on the Census Bureau’s Race and Ethnicity Advisory Committee and was vice-chair of the Advisory Committee on the African American Population from 2007 to 2012.