Nadine Burke Harris (born 1975) is a Canadian-American pediatrician who was the Surgeon General of California between 2019 and 2022; she is the first person appointed to that position. She is known for linking adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress with harmful effects to health later in life. Hailed as a pioneer in the treatment of toxic stress, she is an advisory council member for the Clinton Foundation's "Too Small to Fail" campaign, and the founder and former chief executive officer of the Center for Youth Wellness. Her work was also featured in Paul Tough's book How Children Succeed.
Early life and education
Nadine Burke Harris was born in 1975 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is of Jamaican heritage and lived briefly in Jamaica before the family moved to the United States when she was 4 years old. Her father is a biochemist and her mother is a nurse. She received her bachelor's degree in integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and her medical degree from the University of California, Davis. She completed her residency in pediatrics at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, within Stanford University School of Medicine. After earning her master's degree in public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she went on to serve a residency at Stanford in pediatrics.
Her graduate studies were supported by The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
Early career
In 2005, Burke Harris joined the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) staff, where she was tasked with the goal of developing programs to end health disparities in San Francisco. While at Harvard, Burke Harris identified access to health care as a key component of health disparities in San Francisco. In 2007, with support from CPMC, she became the founding physician of the Bayview Child Health Center and medical director of the new clinic.
Career
In 2008, after reading "The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health: Turning Gold Into Lead," by Vincent J. Felitti, Burke Harris realized that her patients' traumatic experiences were having a negative impact on their present and future health.
In 2011, she was appointed by the American Academy of Pediatrics to the Project Advisory Committee for the Resilience Project.
From 2010 to 2012, Burke Harris co-founded the Adverse Childhood Experiences project in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco, with colleagues Daniel Lurie from Tipping Point Foundation, Kamala Harris, Victor G. Carrion, Lenore Anderson, Lisa Pritzker, and Katie Albright. From this effort, the Center for Youth Wellness was created in 2012 to create a clinical model that recognizes the impact of adverse experiences on health and effectively treats toxic stress in children. The multidisciplinary approach focuses on preventing and undoing the chemical, physiological and neurodevelopmental results of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The Center integrates primary health care, mental health and wellness, research, policy, education, and community and family support services to children and families.
In 2014, she spoke at a TED event titled TEDMED in San Francisco. Her talk, "How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime," had reached over 7.2 million viewers on TED.com as of June 2020.
In 2018, Burke Harris released her first book The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
On January 21, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her as the state's first Surgeon General. She was sworn in on February 11, 2019. On February 1, 2022, she announced she would resign to focus on her family, effective February 11, 2022.
The Center for Youth Wellness
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are defined as preventable and traumatic early experiences; they can range from exposure to violence, poverty and neglect, to physical, emotional and sexual abuse. As a result, it may increase the likelihood for "risky health behaviors, chronic health conditions, low life potential, and early death" in adulthood. Exposure to ACEs may lead to toxic stress, which varies from typical stress in that it is chronic and excessive, and results in antagonistic physiological responses that can lead to poor health outcomes in life.
