Kirsten Austad MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and a hospitalist at Boston Medical Center. She earned her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Medical Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her medical degree from Harvard Medical School in the New Pathway Program. She completed her residency in Family Medicine at Boston Medical Center, the largest safety-net hospital in New England. Following residency, she completed a research fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Global Women’s Health and earned a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. During this time she worked clinically as a nocturnist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Dana Farber Cancer Institute. After fellowship she returned to Boston Medical Center where she is a hospitalist and the Medical Director of the HealthNet Inpatient Family Medicine service, one of the largest family medicine hospitalist services in the country.
Her research focuses on global implementation science aimed at improving the delivery of women’s health care in low-resource settings, including respectful maternity care and family planning. In addition to global health research, she also has extensive experience in program development, having spent 6 years as the Director of Women’s Health for Maya Health Alliance, a non-profit providing care to indigenous Maya patients in the highlights of Guatemala, where she trained and supervised a team of over 20 nurses and doctors to provide community-based patient-centered women’s health care.