Paula Braveman

Paula A. Braveman is an American researcher of health equity and the social determinants of health. She implemented a global initiative focused on health equity while working for the World Health Organization. Braveman is a Professor Emeritus of Family and Community Medicine and the University of Californian, San Francisco. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002.

Early life and education Braveman grew up in Boston and Miami. Her family lived in lower-income and working-class neighborhoods. Her father worked selling advertising for newspapers. Her family includes an older brother.

She earned an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College where she majored in Philosophy. After graduating in 1970, she hitchhiked across United States and Canada with her boyfriend for four months. When they ran out of money, she took a job with a temp agency and was assigned to a "hippie clinic" for at-risk youth.

Career Braveman held roles as a clinical physician in hospitals and health centers in San Francisco. She worked to support public health in Central America in the 1980s by collaborating with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organization. In further work for RWJF, Braveman highlighted the role of education as a social determinant of health.

Braveman attributes an interest in improving social justice as a motivation for her research.

Braveman was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2002. In 2011, she spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the topic of poverty and health.

Selected works