Barbara Gottlieb, MD

Barbara (Bobby) Gottlieb, MD, has been a primary care physician at Brookside Community Health Center since 1981. In addition to providing care to multiple generations of patients, the majority immigrants from Central and South America and the Caribbean, she has developed innovative clinical and public health programs to improve the health of populations and the community. Although she is a committed generalist, with a wide range of interests, she has particular interest and expertise in clinical and public health areas most salient to the community she serves, including women’s and minority health and the integration of mental health and primary care. In addition to her work in Boston, she has worked with a group of health promoters in rural Guatemala since 2000, developing their capacity to address key health issues including tuberculosis, mental health and women’s health and the growing burden of chronic disease.

She has taught multiple courses at Harvard Medical School since 1987, including Patient-Doctor 1, the Primary Care Clerkship and is Co-Chair of the Global and Community Health Track in the Scholars in Medicine/Pursuing Inquiry in Medicine Course. She precepts residents in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Medicine Residency Program, where she is also Director of Ambulatory Faculty Development. She has a secondary appointment at TH Chen/Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, where she directs the MPH Practicum course and a course on Gender and Mental Health.

Based on her decades of working with immigrant and underserved communities, she has a deep commitment to developing meaningful community-based experiences for students through service-learning, clinical care, and innovative public health and practice-based projects. Her interests in this area include the pedagogy of community-engaged teaching and learning, concrete skill-building for students in community settings, and learning through reflection.