LYNN — Magnolia Contreras will receive the Lemuel Shattuck Award for Significant Contributions to Public Health Practice from the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance on June 5.

Contreras grew up in Lynn after emigrating from the Dominican Republic and has spent her entire professional life rooted there, working in public health, volunteering widely, and serving on local boards to support vulnerable residents.

She currently serves as vice president of Community Health at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is also a Lynn resident serving in various community positions across the city, and supports them “with my talent, with my thoughts, (and) with my treasure,” including as an advisor to the Lynn Community Health Center, she said.

“Through Magnolia’s leadership, there has been a real effort at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to identify the reasons for those health inequities… that low-income communities and communities of color experience, and then think about ways to actually support organizations that are working to address those inequities,” said Carlene Pavlos, executive director of Massachusetts Public Health Alliance.

MPHA aims to create health equity by addressing the root causes of health and promoting policies that impact the major drivers of health outcomes. It also works to ensure access to healthy food, safe, affordable housing, and accessible transportation. MPHA advocates for equitable public health services throughout the Commonwealth.

On receiving the award, Contreras said, “My biggest thing is just thankful I am part of the reason, and part of the reason is because I just do this from my heart, and my blood and my breath, like it’s just oozes out of me to do this work.”

Contreras said she believes the reason she is receiving the Lemuel Shattuck award is because of the major projects she has led at Dana-Farber, including expanding access to cancer care, leading an institute-wide patient navigation system, launching a mobile mammography van, and supporting skin cancer screening clinics that bring lifesaving services directly into underserved communities.

“Those would be some examples of the kind of work that is really very complicated, but important work, and it takes a lot of effort, and we do that quite well,” Contreras said.

According to the MPHA, Lemuel Shattuck, a Massachusetts statistician and reformer, helped pioneer the use of data to address social and public health issues: “He was also renowned for his 1850 survey of sanitary conditions throughout the state, the Report of the Sanitary Conditions of Massachusetts, which was commissioned by the state legislature.”

“In this report, Shattuck proposed the creation of a permanent statewide public health infrastructure, and he recommended establishing health offices at the state and local levels to gather statistical information on public health conditions,” according to the MPHA.