Caroline Ficthenberg, PhD

Dr. Fichtenberg is one of the co-directors of the Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network (SIREN) and Research Scientist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In these roles, she leads efforts to conduct, catalyze, and disseminate high quality research on health sector strategies to reduce health inequities by addressing social determinants of health. She brings to these positions more than a decade of experience working to improve health and economic outcomes for America’s most vulnerable families, including seven years working on national efforts in Washington, DC. While Director of Research at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), she led the development of a report that identified nine federal policy changes that could reduce child poverty by 60 percent. As Director of Epidemiology and Planning at the Baltimore City Health Department, she oversaw the city’s first analysis of neighborhood health inequities that uncovered a 20-year gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighborhoods of the city. Caroline also served as director of the Center for Public Health Policy at the American Public Health Association (APHA) and as Health Policy Advisor to Senator Harkin on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, where she promoted health in all policies approaches to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequities. She earned her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University, an M.S. degree in Biology from Yale University and an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.