A global leader in cancer research and health disparities, Otis Brawley is a leading voice in the thoughtful development of cancer screening strategies and ensuring their effectiveness. As a dedicated teacher, he will train the next generation of physicians and researchers to reduce the threat of cancer. With the Bloomberg Distinguished Professorship at Johns Hopkins University, he continues his work looking at how health care, especially oncology, is practiced. He sees this as an opportunity to be vocal about the appropriate interpretation and application of science to relieve human suffering.

Brawley is leading a broad interdisciplinary research effort of cancer health disparities at JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, working to close racial, economic, and social disparities in the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer in the United States and worldwide. He is also directing community outreach programs for underserved populations throughout Maryland as the Kimmel Cancer Center’s associate director for community outreach and engagement. A former professor of oncology and hematology and deputy director for cancer control at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, Brawley will see prostate cancer patients at Johns Hopkins. He is teaching undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Epidemiology in the Bloomberg School, the Department of Oncology at the School of Medicine, and the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Brawley is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and recently received the Martin D. Abeloff Award for Excellence in Public Health and Cancer Control from the Maryland State Council of Cancer Control. The award, named after the director of the Kimmel Cancer Center from 1992 until his death in 2007, was established to recognize advancements made in cancer control practices that influenced the field of public health on a statewide, national, or global scale. Brawley is a graduate of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at University Hospitals of Cleveland, Case-Western Reserve University and a fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute. Brawley previously served as chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society and director of the Georgia Cancer Center at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. At the American Cancer Society, he was responsible for promoting the goals of cancer prevention, early detection, and quality treatment through cancer research and education. He championed efforts to decrease smoking and implement other lifestyle risk reduction programs, as well as to provide critical support to cancer patients, and concentrate cancer control efforts in areas where they could be most effective.