Paula Braveman, MD, MPH is Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her formal training is in Family and Community Medicine and in Epidemiology. For nearly 30 years, Dr. Braveman has studied and published extensively on health equity, health inequalities, and the social determinants of health, and has worked to  bring attention to these issues in the U.S. and internationally. Her research has focused on measuring, documenting, understanding, and addressing socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, particularly in maternal and infant health. During the 1990s she collaborated with World Health Organization staff in Geneva to develop an initiative on equity in health and health care in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, she served as research director for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation national commission on the social determinants of health. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with local, state, federal, and international health agencies to see rigorous research translated into practice. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2002