Biography

Meredith Minkler, DrPH, MPH, is Professor and Director of Health and Social Behavior at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, where she was founding director of the UC Berkeley Center on Aging. During her career, she has undertaken health disparities research, community building and organizing, and community-based participatory research (CBPR) with underserved communities including the low income elderly, grandmothers raising grandchildren, people with disabilities, youth, and immigrant workers. In addition to her research for The California Endowment on CBPR as a strategy for linking place-based work and policy, Dr. Minkler’s current research and service includes community based participatory research and its impacts on policy, an ecological study of health of restaurant workers in SF’s Chinatown (pending), racial ethnic disparities in health of midlife and older Americans and empowerment strategies to promote critical thinking and positive health outcomes in youth. Her publications include over 130 articles in peer reviewed journals and 7 books including the co-edited volume, Community Based Participatory Research for Health: From Process to Outcomes (with Nina Wallerstein, 2nd edition 2008); Community Organizing and Community Building for Health (2nd edition, 2005), Critical Gerontology and Critical Perspectives on Aging (both with Carroll Estes) and the co-authored book Forgotten Caregivers: Grandmothers raising the children in the crack cocaine epidemic (with Kathleen M Roe). In 2011, Dr. Minkler received the John P McGovern Award for Health Promotion from the University Texas, School of Public Heath at Houston. She has also received the Tom Bruce award from the Community-Based Public Health Caucus of the American Public Health Association.