Dr. Paula A. Johnson: A Legacy of Leading with Purpose
Photo: National Library of Medicine
Celebrating a pioneer at the forefront of women’s health and cardiovascular care
“Women's health is an equal rights issue as important as equal pay. It's an issue of the quality and the integrity of science and medicine.”
-Dr. Paula Johnson, “His and Her Healthcare,” TEDWomen 2013
In celebration of both National Heart Health Month and Black History Month, we’re highlighting a leader in the medical field whose trailblazing career represents a crucial convergence of women’s cardiovascular health and social justice: Paula A. Johnson, MD, MPH.
The 2016 Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Women in Medicine awardee, Dr. Johnson has served as the president of Wellesley College since the same year — the first African American president in the school’s history. Dr. Johnson is no stranger to firsts, as she has spent nearly forty years pioneering women’s health and addressing sex-based disparities within healthcare. Through her research, teaching, and advocacy, she has underscored the importance of acknowledging and accounting for sex at every stage of medicine, from clinical research and testing to diagnoses and treatment.
Dr. Johnson’s interest in science and medicine started in early childhood, after witnessing her beloved grandmother battle a debilitating mental illness. “Her care became all-consuming for my family,” Dr. Johnson said during a TED Talk, “and by the time a diagnosis was made, she was in a deep spiral.” Looking back, Dr. Johnson considers her grandmother’s psychiatric illness and her family’s struggle to find her appropriate medical care the “motivational force” behind her commitment to championing women’s health.
After graduating from high school, Dr. Johnson left her hometown of Brooklyn, New York to attend Radcliffe College at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. There, she studied biology under Ruth Hubbard, PhD, the first woman to be tenured in Harvard’s biology department. It was in Dr. Hubbard’s seminar Biology and Women’s Issues that Dr. Johnson discovered the inherent biases within scientific research — biases that often positioned the male body and its response to disease as the gold standard for testing and treatment development, ignoring the potential for differences in disease presentation within females.
Her eyes opened to the glaring inequities entrenched in standard clinical research practices, Dr. Johnson carried the lessons she learned into her graduate and doctoral studies. In 1980, following her graduation from Radcliffe with a bachelor’s in biology, she started her first year at Harvard Medical School. A few years later, Dr. Johnson would take a year off from medical school to complete her master’s at Harvard’s School of Public Health. She graduated from Harvard with both degrees in 1985 and began her residency at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH).
At BWH, Dr. Johnson found herself drawn to cardiology, in part because of the gender disparities she observed surrounding cardiac care and heart disease. Historically considered a ‘men’s issue,’ heart disease was frequently underdiagnosed in women and left untreated because its symptoms often appeared atypical to men’s. Combining cardiology with clinical epidemiology, Dr. Johnson broadened her research on women’s cardiovascular health to include other societal factors that affect women and minorities.
Through her groundbreaking cross-discipline work, Dr. Johnson uncovered key differences in how men and women experience heart disease and respond to treatments. Reflecting on her research process, she said, “I looked at the intersection of race, ethnicity, sex, and gender in cardiology care. Later, that led to a larger vision for me around sex and gender and how that intersected with race and ethnicity. There was so much biology that had not been done, or that was being done poorly, that developing that construct was very important.”
In 1990, Dr. Johnson was made chief medical resident, becoming the first woman and the first African American to hold the position at BWH. She later worked in the cardiac transplant unit and served as director of Quality Management Services before becoming chief of the Division of Women’s Health. Throughout her tenure at BWH, Dr. Johnson worked to expand women’s access to cardiology care and improve its quality, bridging the gap between clinical medicine and public health.
Dr. Johnson founded and headed the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at BWH in 2002. The center’s mission aligned closely with her life’s work: to improve the health of women and transform their care. Interdisciplinary by design, the Connors Center focuses on “advancing research in women's health and biology and translating knowledge of sex-specific risks, manifestations, and symptoms of disease, as well as responses to treatment, into clinical care.” Under Dr. Johnson’s direction, the center has become a leader in the field of women’s health globally.
In addition, Dr. Johnson has frequently used her voice and expertise to advocate for women’s rights in the political arena, too. She has contributed to numerous pieces of national healthcare legislation over the last two decades, including the coverage of birth control under the Affordable Care Act, as well as having served on the City of Boston Public Health Commission as chair. Dr. Johnson also helped develop a new policy for the US National Institutes of Health enacted in 2016 that requires all its research to include sex as a biological variable.
In the same year, the Wellesley College Board of Trustees unanimously voted to approve Dr. Johnson’s appointment as President of Wellesley College. During her inaugural address, she called the presidency the “capstone” of her career — a culmination of almost 40 years devoted to the advancement of women and the improvement of their health and well-being. Since her installment, Dr. Johnson has positioned Wellesley at the helm of STEM education for women while placing inclusive excellence at the heart of the student experience.
The Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation is proud to highlight the exceptional leadership Dr. Johnson has demonstrated throughout her career as physician-scientist and educator.
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