Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA	MSc	05/2011	Epidemiology
Harvard School of Public Health , Boston, MA	ScD	05/2014	Epidemiology

Dr. Brittany Charlton is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in the Department of Population Medicine and at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology. She is also the Co-Director of the Harvard SOGIE (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression) Health Equity Research Collaborative and Adjunct Faculty at The Fenway Institute.

Dr. Charlton is known as a leading scholar documenting reproductive health and cancer disparities affecting sexual and gender minorities. The second focal area of her research is on contraception use and family planning among people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Her research has sustained continuous funding for the last decade from the NIH and foundations including the American Cancer Society. She has been the Principal Investigator on 18 grants including her most recent NIH-funded R01 award focused on sexual orientation-related disparities in obstetrical and perinatal health. Additionally, she collaborates with colleagues across the globe on a host of large-scale studies. Dr. Charlton has published over 60 original research papers including in the BMJ, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and American Journal of Public Health.

In addition to Dr. Charlton’s research program, she co-leads Harvard SOGIE—a 125+ member collaborative that brings together sexual and gender minority health researchers from across the university. Further, Dr. Charlton leads a number of mentoring initiatives, particularly for underrepresented minorities. She is a Certified Facilitator through the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences and she is the founder of the Harvard Sexual and Gender Minority Health Mentoring Program. Dr. Charlton is an award-winning mentor and has individually mentored more than 40 scholars including early-career faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and trainees. In the classroom, Dr. Charlton is the Course Director for a number of classes across Harvard in epidemiology and reproductive health research. In the realm of medical education, she helps to lead efforts with Harvard Medical School's Sexual and Gender Minority Health Equity Initiative—a multi-year enterprise to enhance the ability of medical school students and faculty to provide evidence-based care by integrating sexual and gender minority health content across the curriculum.

Dr. Charlton received her MSc and ScD from the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.