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Dr. Karen Scott (she/ her)
Vice Chair

Dr. Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH, FACOG (she/her/hers) is a Reproductive Justice (RJ) informed sexual, reproductive, and perinatal (SPR) epidemiologist, educator, and obstetric hospitalist with more than 20 years of experience in supporting persons across the sexual and reproductive life course in high need, low resource communities, across different practice types and locations throughout the Midwest and Northern and Central California.   As a “dissident and disruptive” clinician scientist, recovering OBGYN, and critical public health scholar, her work is accomplished through the application of cultural rigor and a RJ praxis in sexual and reproductive health education, health services provision, health services research, and QI initiatives. Dr. Scott’s research focuses on the analysis of structural, institutional, and interpersonal factors that inform health care access, quality and utilization, focusing on equitable patient-provider and community-hospital partnerships and shared decision making. Additionally, her interests include innovations in participatory technologies to advance sexual and reproductive health equity, participatory action research and evaluation of community- and hospital-based interventions in SRP health, and participatory curricular development and evaluation.

Currently, Dr. Scott is an assistant adjunct professor in the UCSF Family Health Care Nursing Department and the Director of the CMQCC California Birth Equity Collaboration. In collaboration with the National Birth Equity Collaborative and Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, she serves as the CMQCC Director for Mothers Voices Driving Birth Equity. More importantly, she is a very proud member of the SPARK RJ NOW Board of Directors.