Medical Pioneer to Address Access to Health Care for Women

WORCESTER, Mass. – Paula A. Johnson, MD, MPH, chief of the division of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and executive director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology, will deliver the annual Katherine A. Henry ’86 Memorial Lecture titled "Women’s Health: A Paradigm for the Future of Health and Healthcare" on April 20 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The event is free and open to the public.

Johnson attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University, followed by Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, earning both her medical degree and her master’s in public health in 1985. While doing her residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Johnson became fascinated by cardiology and chose it as her specialty. In 1990, she became the first woman in the history of Brigham and Women’s Hospital to be selected as a chief medical resident. She has served as teacher and mentor to more than 100 residents and Harvard Medical School students.

Throughout her career, Johnson has focused on access to and quality of cardiac care for women. A pioneer in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease, Johnson conceived of and developed one of the first facilities in the country to focus on heart disease in women, the Center for Cardiovascular Disease in Women, which aims to develop new prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies through research as it serves women in all stages of life. Because African-American women are 50 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than white women, many of the Center’s efforts are directed to empowering black women in matters of their health and to examining relationships between race and disease. In particular, her work focuses on the attempt to understand and eliminate health disparities among different groups of women.

The lecture series was endowed by Katherine Henry’s parents, in memory of their daughter who died in 1997. The talk is co-sponsored by women’s and gender studies and the pre-medical/pre-dental program.