Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Profile

Rebecca Brown, MD, MPH is CHERP Core Investigator and an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on optimizing functional status among socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults. She has examined the epidemiology and outcomes of functional impairment and other geriatric conditions among vulnerable older populations, with a methodologic focus on using primary data collection including surveys as wells as secondary analysis of large data sources and national surveys to answer research questions in this topic area. Her more recent work builds on these epidemiologic findings to develop, test, and implement interventions to optimize function for vulnerable older adults in both clinic and community settings.

Dr. Brown completed her medical school training at Harvard Medical School. She completed residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), followed by fellowship in geriatric medicine at Harvard Medical School, including an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She returned to UCSF for a research fellowship in geriatric medicine and joined the faculty of the UCSF Division of Geriatrics in 2013. She joined the Penn faculty in 2018.

In her clinical work, Dr. Brown supervises and trains medical students, residents, and fellows while providing care for older patients at Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center (CMCVAMC).