Victoria L. Brown, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow in US Health Equity at Harvard Medical School with expertise in women’s and maternal health outcomes research. She was previously an NIH T32 Research Fellow in Women’s Health in the Division of Public Health Sciences and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and received her PhD in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Skidmore College and likewise taught at Ithaca College.
As an applied medical anthropologist, Dr. Brown uses interdisciplinary mixed methods to investigate the socioecological factors influencing women’s health and wellbeing across the lifespan, with studies spanning themes of maternal autonomy in childbirth, geographic variation in obstetric practice patterns (e.g., labor induction, cesarean section), provider disbelief and dismissal of chronic pelvic pain in women, economic precarity and employment during cancer treatment among parent-survivors, and the social reproduction of rural livelihoods.
Since 2024, Dr. Brown has led the Revitalizing Birth in Rural Communities (REBIRTH) Project. Developed alongside clinical and community partners across multiple field sites in the southeastern Missouri “Bootheel,” rural New England/New York, and central Kentucky, this project examines the effects of obstetric unit closures while innovating alternative models of maternity care delivery to advance rural maternal and community health and wellbeing.
Dr. Brown’s research has been supported across multiple NIH institutes and centers, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (L60HD113076); the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (T32DK120497); and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1TR002345). Her work has likewise been supported through numerous fellowships and career awards, including the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport; the American Association of University Women; Siteman Cancer Center; the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (WashU); the Confluence Collaborative for Community Engagement (WashU); and the Binghamton University Council/Foundation.