Jerry P. Abraham, MD, MPH, CMQ
Jerry P. Abraham, MD, MPH, CMQ
Director & Chief Vaccinologist / Assistant Professor
Kedren Community Health Center / Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science
Dr. Jerry P. Abraham, MD MPH CMQ, serves as an advocate for equitable access to public health and healthcare delivery for all people across Los Angeles County. Throughout his time serving as the Chief Vaccinologist of the COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Initiative of KEDREN, a Historically Black Institution HBI, Acute Psychiatric Hospital, and Federally Qualified Health Center FQHC in South Los Angeles and the Director of the CDU-KEDREN Mobile Street Medicine program, he has fought for the rights of African-American, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ patients to access safe, reliable, and nondiscriminatory quality care in their community, where people live, work, worship, play, go-to-school, and caring for the homebound. Through a mixture of avid social activism and extensive medical advocacy, Dr. Abraham has spent his entire short career working to prioritize those who are abused and neglected by the healthcare system -- the hard-to-reach, hardly-reached, often-forgotten and left-behind.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Abraham led a globally-recognized vaccine equity initiative to ensure that all residents of Los Angeles County were fully vaccinated and boosted from SARS CoV-2, which received many awards and recognitions including from Governor Gavin Newsom. He has created programs devoted to addressing the needs and social determinants of underrepresented and underserved communities during the pandemic including addressing access to reliable transportation for medical care for patients, providing assistance and resources to people experiencing homelessness PEH and housing and food insecurity, people living with HIV PLWH, in addition to providing access to COVID-19 resources including testing, vaccines, therapeutics, and patient education on vaccine safety and efficacy. Through these initiatives, Dr. Abraham and his team have vaccinated over 300,000 people of South Los Angeles, tested hundreds of thousands more, distributed thousands of COVID-19 therapeutics, and as a result their efforts have reduced COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and fatalities and saved countless lives - placing people and community first and combating medical misinformation and medical distrust and mistrust. Dr. Abraham and his team have expanded their mission and ministry beyond COVID-19 to include Mobile Street Medicine, tackling additional health challenges including chronic diseases, the mpox outbreak, expanding access to all vaccines for children and adults, HIV/STD/viral hepatitis services, substance use and harm reduction services, health insurance enrollment, among other services.
His passion for health equity and racial and medical justice have pushed the traditional boundaries of medical care, democratizing and ubiquitizing health beyond the traditional four walls of hospitals and clinics His deep love of his community and the people of Los Angeles have defined his career and life-calling to serve his neighbors. Dr. Abraham will continue to drive health reform in California in his quest to achieve the quintuple aim: accessible, affordable, high-quality, whole-person-centered care that preserves the joy of practice for health professionals and delivers equitable and just care for all.
Dr. Abraham, a board-certified Family Physician, Epidemiologist, and Medical Quality Specialist, is President of the Los Angeles County Medical Association LACMA, Trustee of the California Medical Association CMA, Councilor of the American Medical Association AMA, and Delegate to the United States Pharmacopeia. Dr. Abraham is a Diplomate of the American Board of Family Medicine ABFM and the American Board of Medical Quality ABMQ. Dr. Abraham holds a Master of Public Health from Emory University and completed a post-graduate Fellowship in Global Injury Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He received his Medical Doctorate from the University of Texas at San Antonio and completed his Family & Community Medicine Residency training at the USC Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, where he also completed a Faculty Development, Medical Quality, and Health Policy Fellowship. Dr. Abraham holds a joint appointment in Family & Community Medicine and Psychiatry at the Charles Drew University CDU, a Historically Black Medical School HBMS and also serves on the Faculty of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine Department of Family Medicine.
Dr. Abraham continues to lecture across the nation on Vaccine Equity, including presenting before the National Academy of Medicine NAM and has testified before the US Senate and Congress on the COVID-19 Pandemic, and is currently a Fellow of the American Medical Association AMA in Medical Justice & Advocacy MJAF - a joint program with the Morehouse School of Medicine MSM Satcher Health Leadership Institute SHLI, and most recently served as a Climate Health Organizing Fellow CHOF for the Center for Health Equity, Education, & Advocacy CHEEA of the Cambridge Health Alliance CHA, a Harvard Teaching Hospital.