Susie Baldwin
Susie Baldwin, MD, MPH, FACPM is a preventive medicine and public health specialist who works as the Medical Director for the Office of Women’s Health at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH), overseeing work to reduce health inequities in diverse female populations. Dr. Baldwin founded and Co-Chairs the DPH Human Trafficking/ Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) Task Force and represents DPH on the County’s CSEC Steering Committee. Dr. Baldwin also represents DPH on the County’s Gender Responsive Advisory Committee, working to improve conditions for women and gender expansive people in LA County jails while advancing the County’s Alternatives to Incarceration initiative.
Dr. Baldwin has previously served in LA County as the Associate Medical Director in the Division of HIV and STD Programs and as Principal Investigator of the Los Angeles County Health Survey. Prior, she worked as Medical Director for Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona and for Clinical and Community Programs at the California Family Health Council (now Essential Access Health). She provided family planning and abortion services at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, and the University of California Los Angeles, and worked as a U.S.-Mexico border doctor at a federally qualified community health center. She published many peer reviewed research articles on HPV and cervical cancer prevention, sexual and reproductive health, human trafficking, and other public health topics, as well as several book chapters on a variety of subjects.
Dr. Baldwin co-founded HEAL Trafficking, an organization that has led innovative health care and public health solutions to trafficking since 2013, and served as Board President through 2020. From 2005-2012, Dr. Baldwin volunteered as the physician for survivors of labor and sex trafficking in the U.S.’s first specialized clinic, based in Los Angeles. She has trained thousands of people on trafficking and health and served on the first U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Technical Working Group to develop national trainings (SOAR) for health care providers. Dr. Baldwin’s ideas and approaches are now widely incorporated into standardized curricula.
Dr. Baldwin has continuously engaged in anti-trafficking research and advocacy. She was invited by TEDMED to give a talk on “diagnosing human trafficking” in 2016 and serves as a human trafficking consultant for groups including the National Human Trafficking Technical Assistance Center. Dr. Baldwin led creation of the HEAL Trafficking Protocol Toolkit for Developing Responses to Trafficking Victims in Health Care Settings, which has been widely utilized across the U.S. and around the world, and is currently leading the team of experts working on its revision. In recent years, Dr. Baldwin has served as an expert witness in criminal justice cases involving trafficking survivors.
Dr. Baldwin attended Columbia University, SUNY Downstate College of Medicine in Brooklyn, NY, and the Zuckerman School of Public Health at the University of Arizona. She completed two post-doctoral research fellowships and held academic appointments at University of Arizona and University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Baldwin has received numerous awards for her work, including the Freedom Network Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award, the American Public Health Association’s Felicia Stewart Advocacy Award from the Population, Sexual, and Reproductive Health Section, the Journey Out Visions of Freedom Award, the LA County CSEC Champion Award (twice), and two awards for Physician Leadership in Health Equity. She has served on the Boards of Physicians for Reproductive Health, Physicians for a National Health Program – California/California Physicians Alliance, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America National Medical Committee.