Dr. Lisa Cooper (she/her) is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine and the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Health Care at the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. She is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. She also directs the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute.
A Liberian-born general internist, social epidemiologist, and health services researcher, Dr. Cooper was one of the first scientists to document disparities in the quality of relationships between physicians and patients from socially at-risk groups. She then designed innovative interventions to improve physicians’ communication skills, patients’ self-management skills, and healthcare organizations’ ability to address needs of populations experiencing health disparities. She has authored more than 300 highly cited and influential peer-reviewed publications and several book chapters—one of which was featured in the Institute of Medicine’s 2003 Report, Unequal Treatment. She is also the author of the book Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). In 2021, President Biden appointed Dr. Cooper to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, where she advised policymakers on crucial scientific and technological developments.
Dr. Cooper has received several honors for her pioneering research, teaching, and mentoring, including a MacArthur Award in 2007, election to the National Academy of Medicine in 2008, and a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Heart Association in 2022. Dr. Cooper is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, where she and her transdisciplinary team work with multi-sector partners to implement rigorous clinical trials, identifying and disseminating interventions that alleviate racial and income disparities in social determinants and health outcomes. The Center also provides training to a new generation of health equity scholars and leaders.
JHU Center Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity
Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research