LaVerne L. Brown, Ph.D. is the founding executive director of My Health Reimagined and host of the THRIVE podcast series. At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Brown led two nationally recognized initiatives that are reshaping how biomedical science understands health across diverse populations: the development of the biomedical science of resilience framework, and the Vitamin D Paradox in Black Americans initiative. Her presentations move scientists, policymakers, and community leaders from passive awareness of research inequity to active understanding of its structural causes and its biological consequences. Dr. Brown doesn't just describe the problem of normalizing one population group as the universal health standard, she makes it undeniable.

A woman with dark, curly hair styled in locks, smiling and looking down, with warm lighting and blurred background.

About the Speaker

Speaking Topics

  • Description: Naming the problem of biased health standards is necessary but insufficient. In this presentation, Dr. Brown moves beyond critique to deliver a complementary, actionable framework for how biomedical science can pursue a complete and accurate understanding of health. Drawing on her work developing the biomedical science of resilience framework at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Brown demonstrates how thriving is achieved not only by reducing risk factors but by identifying and building on the underappreciated biological and community strengths that deficit-based research has systematically overlooked.

    Takeaways:

    1. Audiences will distinguish between deficit-based and strength-based approaches to health research and will identify at least one specific way that strength-based framing would change how a current study, policy, or program in their field is designed or evaluated.

    2. Audiences will leave with a working understanding of the biomedical science of resilience framework as a scientifically grounded methodology for producing more complete and more equitable health knowledge.

  • Description: By placing two fully healthy woodpeckers side by side and demonstrating how one becomes 'diseased' the moment the other's biology becomes the standard, Dr. Brown delivers a science-based experience that makes the structural problem of population-based health norming viscerally undeniable. This keynote reaches scientists and non-scientists alike because the argument is made in biology before it is made in policy, and by the time the human health parallel lands, the audience has already reached the conclusion themselves.

    Takeaways:

    1. Audiences will identify the specific mechanisms by which health standards built from a single population group produce false pathologies in historically excluded communities and will name at least one example from their own field or practice.

    2. Audiences will leave with a reframed understanding of research inclusion: not as a diversity initiative, but as a scientific necessity for producing valid, generalizable health knowledge.

Book speaker
Woman standing at a podium with a presentation slide behind her at a conference.
A conference room with a large screen projector displaying a virtual meeting with multiple participants. Several people are seated at tables, listening and taking notes, some using laptops or talets.
Six individuals standing on a stage in formal attire, with a banner above them that commemorates the 40th anniversary of Kyung Hee Medical Center International Symposium, held on May 9, 2009, at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea.
A person giving a presentation at an international symposium in Seoul, Korea. They are standing at a podium with a microphone, with flowers on the stage and a large screen behind them displaying a presentation slide.
Three people engaged in conversation at a formal event, with floral arrangements and other guests in the background.
Two women sitting on a red couch, one with yellow shirt and glasses, the other in black with a flower corsage, engaged in conversation.
A woman standing at a wooden podium with a sign that says 'LAVERNE BROWN' and a red and white 'USP' logo, speaking into a microphone in a conference room.
Event poster for the 2023 Black Men's Brain Health Conference on February 9, 2023, from 9:30 to 10:15 AM, featuring a session on funding opportunities. The poster displays a blue background with geometric patterns, includes the event title, date, tim
An informational flyer for a Women in Nutraceuticals webinar series titled 'Funding Opportunities for Women’s Health Research,' scheduled for Thursday, June 27th, at 10 am EST / 4 pm CET, featuring speakers LaVerne L. Brown, Susan Hazels Mitmesser, a
Promotional graphic for the podcast series 'Let's Thrive' hosted by Laverne, featuring the logo 'My Health. Reimagined.', a smiling woman with dreadlocks, a microphone icon, and a description about uplifting voices in health narratives.