Forty Years of Healthcare Lessons: From Violence Prevention to Medical Education
Deborah Prothrow-Stith
She is a nationally respected physician leader and public health innovator who transformed the College of Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU). Since 2016, she has served as Dean of the College of Medicine, leading the creation of CDU’s independent medical school and securing LCME accreditation for the university to award the MD degree for the first time. The new school—only the fourth at a historically Black university—welcomed its inaugural class of 60 diverse students in 2023.
As founding dean, she expanded the College of Medicine faculty from 100 to more than 600 and reestablished residency programs in South Los Angeles, including Family Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Internal Medicine, and Psychiatry. She also helped attract unprecedented philanthropic support from MacKenzie Scott, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Sutter Health.
A former Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health and longtime Harvard faculty member, Dr. Prothrow Stith is widely known for pioneering the framing of youth violence as a public health issue. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a graduate of Spelman College and Harvard Medical School.