Appointment of Courtney A. Schreiber, MD, MPH, as Executive Director of FOCUS
September 28, 2021
To:PSOM Faculty, Students, and Staff
From:J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, EVP/Dean
Lisa M. Bellini, MD, Senior Vice Dean for Academic Affairs
Eve J. Higginbotham, SM, MD, ML, Vice Dean for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity
As we celebrate Women in Medicine month, we are delighted to announce the appointment of Courtney A. Schreiber, MD, MPH, as Executive Director of FOCUS on Health and Leadership for Women (FOCUS), the Perelman School of Medicine’s nationally recognized program to improve the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women faculty, residents, and medical students while fostering equity research and promoting women’s health.
Dr. Schreiber is the Stuart and Emily B.H. Mudd Professor of Human Behavior and Reproduction in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Chief of the Division of Family Planning. A member of the Penn faculty since 2006, Dr. Schreiber is an accomplished and highly impactful leader in academic medicine, with a singular focus on overcoming inequities, improving the lives and wellbeing of women, and supporting the careers of clinicians and scientists.
Dr. Schreiber is the founding director of PEACE, the Pregnancy Early Access Center at Penn Medicine, which is a national model for the integration of family planning and early pregnancy care. She serves as Program Director of the Fellowship in Complex Family Planning at Penn and Research Director of the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health K-12 Program. Dr. Schreiber is a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and also co-director of Penn PROMOTES Research on Sex and Gender, one of the seven anchor programs affiliated with the Office of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (OIDE). She has also served on the Advisory Council of the OIDE for the last three years, significantly contributing to efforts to advance inclusion, diversity, and equity at Penn Medicine. At the national level, Dr. Schreiber recently served in a leadership role in the ACGME accreditation process of Complex Family Planning as an American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology subspecialty and serves as Chair of the ABOG Division of Complex Family Planning.
Dr. Schreiber’ research focuses on overcoming barriers to reproductive health care and access, and closing sex and race disparity gaps. Among numerous awards and honors, she received a 2019 Clinical Research Achievement Award from the Clinical Research Forum.
Dr. Schreiber obtained her undergraduate degree in religion at Columbia University and her MD at New York University. She completed her residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at HUP and a Family Planning Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Magee Women’s Hospital.
Since its establishment more than two decades ago, FOCUS has played a crucial role in advancing leadership training, career mentoring, and research development for women faculty, residents, and medical students and in advocating for policies to achieve gender equity. Dr. Schreiber succeeds longtime Executive Director Stephanie B. Abbuhl, MD, who stepped down in June with her assumption of emeritus status. Dr. Schreiber has articulated an exciting and inclusive vision for the future of FOCUS. Please join us in congratulating her on this well-deserved appointment as the program’s next Executive Director.