Lisa Cooper

Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH, is the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Health Care at Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Bloomberg School of Public Health. A Liberian-born general internist, social epidemiologist, and health services researcher, she directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. Her academic journey includes a BA in Chemistry from Emory University (1984), MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1988), MPH in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (1993), residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center (1991), and fellowships in General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (1994). She joined Johns Hopkins as a postdoctoral researcher and has been on the faculty since 1994.

Dr. Cooper was one of the first scientists to document disparities in physician-patient relationships for socially at-risk groups and has designed interventions to improve physicians’ communication skills, patients’ self-management skills, and healthcare organizations’ responses to health disparities in hypertension, depression, and cardiovascular disease. As principal investigator of more than 20 federal and private foundation grants, she is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications, including “Race, gender, and partnership in the patient-physician relationship” (JAMA, 1999), “Patient-centered communication, ratings of care, and concordance of patient and physician race” (Ann Intern Med, 2003), “Patient race/ethnicity and quality of patient-physician communication during medical visits” (Am J Public Health, 2004), and the book “Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). Her honors include the 2007 MacArthur Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Medicine, American Society for Clinical Investigation, and Association of American Physicians, the 2014 Herbert W. Nickens Award, 2017 Helen Rodriguez-Trias Social Justice Award, 2022 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award, 2023 John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research, and appointment to President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2021). She has mentored more than 75 individuals pursuing careers in medicine, nursing, and public health.

Professional Email: lisa.cooper@jhmi.edu