In recognition of Women’s History Month, HPRC honors the life and celebrates the work of Judith Bradford, PhD, a pioneer of health disparity research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. After a long and valiant battle with cancer, Dr. Bradford passed away last month, leaving behind a tremendous legacy in the nation’s health equity movement. Nearly 30 years before the U.S. Institute of Medicine released its 2011 landmark report on LGBT health, Dr. Bradford had already played a key role in one of the first community research studies of HIV/AIDS among gay men. Addressing health disparities across the LGBT population would become her life’s work.
Dr. Bradford played a key role in creating an LGBT research framework, and she was the first scientist to head an NIMHD-funded, LGBT-focused population studies center – The Fenway Institute (TFI), which she co-chaired since its inception in 2001. She was also the Director of the TFI’s Center for Population Research on LGBT Health. In 2014, Dr. Bradford was appointed to NIMHD’s National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
