Norma Jo Waxman, MD

Norma Jo Waxman MD is an Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF. She graduated with a B.S. from UC Berkeley, medical school from St. Louis University, and completed her Family Medicine Residency at UCSF/SFGH in 1991. She is active nationally in efforts to provide comprehensive contraception insurance coverage, prevent restriction to abortion access, and the move to expand “opt-out” abortion training in Family Medicine residencies.

Dr. Waxman is a popular invited speaker at national and international conferences. She addresses health care providers and the public on diverse issues involving Primary Care and Reproductive and Women’s Health. Lectures have included all aspects of Contraception, Sexuality after Menopause, Adolescent Medicine, Migraine, Depression, Obesity and Physician Advocacy. She has co-authored and published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on Contraception, IUD insertion and use, Abortion access and training, and Menopause. She is an invited reviewer for journals including Family Medicine, The Journal of Family Practice and the Journal of Women’s Health.   Dr. Waxman is considered a national thought leader in women’s health and been invited to sit on scientific advisory boards in these area.

Between 1992 to 1998, her positions include being a Child and Adolescent Sexual Abuse examiner for the City and County of San Francisco and Adolescent Medicine faculty at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

From 1998 to 2011 she was core faculty in the UCSF Family Medicine Residency at SFGH and the co-director of CME for the UCSF Dept of Family and Community Medicine. From 2005 to 2008 she was the director of the UCSF TEACH Project, an academic community partnership integrating reproductive health curriculum- specifically contraception and abortion skills- into family medicine residency programs. In 2008 she joined the faculty in the Bixby Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy, a division of the UCSF Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology as an Investigator in the Hewlett funded LARC (Long acting reversible contraception) Project. Since 2011 she has been in private practice providing comprehensive family medicine for men, women, teens and children, and offering all out patient gynecologic care, including abortion care. Over the past year she has become involved with telemedicine and social media roles in medicine.

Dr. Waxman has been a health policy activist for decades. She lobbies in Sacramento and Washington DC regarding diverse health policy efforts from expansion of contraception insurance coverage, preventing restrictions to abortion, passage of the ERA and Fair Pay Act, to provision of Health Care for All. In 2005-2008 she worked extensively on the health effects of Parental Notification Laws- she testified in the California State legislature, was interviewed on television and radio, presented abstracts and participated in panels and debates on this subject. She contributes to both the California and American Academy of Family Physician House of Delegates by supporting and authoring resolutions regarding patient access to contraception and abortion, physician training in reproductive health and the national movement to expand abortion training within Family Medicine residencies.

Dr Waxman serves professional organizations including the American Medical Women’s Association, where she currently is the Advocacy Committee Co-Chair, a member of the Governance Committee and has been an active member since 1985. She has been a member of clinical expert panels including IUD Trainings, Women and Depression and Women and Migraines for the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP). She represents the California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP) as a member of the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, served on the CAFP Scientific Planning committee for a decade and in 2011-2012 he was asked to be inaugural faculty for the CAFP CME Leadership Institute.

Norma Jo lives with her 2 daughters at the beach near San Francisco. Dr Waxman’s favorite activities are yoga, cooking, traveling and being a frequent volunteer in her daughter’s classrooms.