About

Dr. Brittany D Chambers is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of California, Davis. She was born and raised in Oakland, California, and is a first-generation college student who completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley, majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. She further earned an MPH in Health Promotion from Fresno State and a PhD in Community Health Education from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Dr. Chambers is a community health scientist dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive health equity among Black, Indigenous, and Other People Of Color (BIPOC). Her work merges critical and public health theories to partner with BIPOC women and birthing people and organizations to better understand, operationalize, and dismantle racism. Her research includes a cell-to-society approach to understanding how racism impacts preterm birth among Black and Latina/x women in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she has led community-based participatory projects to reconceptualize and measure structural racism. Currently, she is developing and piloting a racial equity training for perinatal care providers, with a focus on reproductive justice and centering BIPOC women and birthing people throughout the research process.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Sociology
• Internal medicine
• Gerontology
• Demography
• Gender studies
• Environmental health
• Nursing
• Pediatrics
• Endocrinology
• Obstetrics
• Clinical psychology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• “Shifting the Culture and the Way That We Practice”: Perinatal Clinicians' Cognitive, Behavioral, and Team‐Level Changes Following Equity‐Focused Interventions

  Birth · 2026-01-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: In recent years, US hospitals have implemented novel interventions to reduce racism, bias, and their effects in perinatal healthcare (e.g., implicit bias training, anti-racism seminars). Healthcare workers may also encounter informal interventions in support of these goals (e.g., peer feedback on microaggressions). There is little scholarship on how equity-focused interventions affect clinicians and clinical teams. METHODS: Using qualitative in-depth interview data from 20 California hospital-based perinatal clinicians, we investigated changes in how perinatal clinicians approached their work following equity-focused interventions. RESULTS: Sixteen respondents discussed changes they observed in themselves or their colleagues. We categorized these as: (1) cognitive changes (e.g., recognizing one's own biased thinking and behavior; better understanding the role of racism in disparities); (2) individual behavior changes (e.g., speaking up about inequities; assessing and mitigating bias in one's own behavior; acting more intentionally when caring for patients at risk for worse outcomes); and (3) team behavior changes (e.g., greater intra-colleague discussion of equity topics; collective accountability; efforts to reduce the harms of bias in clinical care). Many described interventions that overlapped or even synergized with one another, including combinations of formal and informal efforts. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that equity-focused interventions can produce observable changes in perinatal patient-care processes. However, it may be challenging for evaluators and healthcare leaders alike to understand what interventions, in what combinations and perinatal settings, produce desired results. Researchers will need innovative methods and a deep understanding of the intervention context to rigorously study these novel interventions-overlapping, multi-level, synergistic-and their effects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Comparative effectiveness of two enhanced prenatal care models on preterm birth: an exploratory analysis of the EMBRACE randomized trial

  American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology MFM · 2026-01-22

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Reliability of the BEliefs in Breastfeeding Empowerment Scale in Measuring Breastfeeding Perceptions

  Current Developments in Nutrition · 2025-05-01

  articleOpen access

  kcal) or a high-fat, high-sucrose diet (HFHSD, 53.7 fat kcal and 42.48 carbohydrates kcal) for 6 weeks to induce obesity.Mice were then assigned to one of four dietary treatment groups (n10/ group): CON, CON + 10% (wt/wt) PB, HFHSD, or HFHSD + 10% PB for 6 weeks prior to mating with lean males and continued through pregnancy.Food intakes were recorded daily and body weight (bw) measured weekly.At days post coitum 17.5, dams were fasted for 4h and anesthetized with a ketamine/xylazine cocktail (100 mg/10 mg/kg bw).Before euthanasia, body composition was assessed using a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry and tissues were collected and weighed.Fetal and placental outcomes including the number of pups per litter, and group average fetal, placental and conceptus weight were recorded.Fasting serum lipids and glucose were also assessed after euthanization.Data were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA with HFHSD and PB as factors, followed by post hoc tests with p< 0.05.Results: As expected, HFHSD significantly increased body weight (P< 0.05) and visceral fat (P< 0.005) compared to CON, but PB supplementation had no significant effect on these parameters.HFHSD diet increased serum total cholesterol compared to CON (41.0 AE 16.1 mg/dL in CON vs. 53.6AE 15.8 mg/dL in HFHSD, P0.035), and PB supplementation with HFHSD diet significantly lowered it (52.4AE 17.0 mg/dL in HFHSD vs. 42.2AE 15.0 mg/dL in HFHSD+PB, P0.015).Serum triglycerides were lowest in the HFHSD+PB group, although differences were not statistically significant.Fasting glucose levels were unaffected by dietary treatments.HFHSD significantly increased conceptus weight compared to CON (9.566 AE 2.454 g in CON vs. 7.571 AE 1.978 g in HFHSD, P0.024), but fetal weight was significantly higher in the HFHSD+PB group compared to HFHSD (0.744 AE 0.275 g vs 0.606 AE 0.171 g, P0.035).Additionally, HFHSD+PB tended to have the lowest placental weight (P0.058).Conclusions: PB may mitigate the impact of maternal obesity and improve metabolic health of the dam but seem to have modest effects on fetal outcomes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Impact of clinical documentation integrity query software into hospital medicine workflow: a comparison of resident and non-resident teams

  Discover Health Systems · 2025-08-01

  articleOpen access

  Despite growing understanding, integration of Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) into the clinical environment is challenged by complex physician workflow, perceptions of time, and attitudes towards the electronic medical record (EMR). New innovations such as computer assisted coding and AI-software have shown improved efficiency for CDI specialists and coders. However, more understanding about the impact on documenting clinicians is needed. A CDI software with expanded options for query review through EMR, web-based, and mobile application platforms was integrated. Hospital Medicine physicians were surveyed about query platform usage, platform workflow integration, query template clarity, and overall perception of integration changes. CDI query metrics including (1) total query number, (2) response percentage, (3) confirmation percentage, and (4) response time were compared between resident and non-resident groups for 6 months pre- and post-software integration. Post-intervention surveys were completed by 56 of 116 (48%) resident and 61 of 108 (56%) attending physicians. Mobile application platform use was highest among both resident (86%) and attending (89%) physicians. All platforms were reported as effective in clinical workflow integration. New templates improved ease of locating and understanding the query. Post-intervention, an increase in overall query volume was noted. However, average query response time, completion rates and confirmation rates all improved on both resident and non-resident groups. Overall, the software integration was reported as a positive change. CDI integration into the unpredictable clinical environment can be successful when innovations promote flexibility for physicians with varied clinical and documentation experience.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Perspectives from Black Women in the Midwest about Structural Racism and Reproductive Health

  Health Equity · 2025-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: The Midwestern United States is a region with both positive overall maternal health outcomes and extreme racial inequities. There is growing attention to the role of structural racism in creating these disparities, yet limited research on how Black women define and experience structural racism in the Midwest. Purpose: This qualitative study aims to understand how Black women in the Midwest experience structural racism, primarily related to their health care and neighborhood experiences. Methods: We interviewed 20 Black women in the Midwest from August 2020 to August 2021. Participants were identified via network sampling. Interviewees responded to open-ended questions about defining structural racism, personal experiences with structural racism, and recommendations for addressing these issues. We analyzed interview transcripts using grounded theory, noted patterns, and analyzed memos for the main domains of structural racism. Results: All individuals lived in urban areas and had at least some college education. Structural racism domains included the carceral system, education inequities and housing. Within the carceral system, racism occurred within interactions with police, judges, prosecutors, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Housing issues included affordability, safety, residential segregation, food deserts, and environmental hazards. Health care sub-domains included microaggressions, paternalism, and racial stereotypes. Participant recommendations to address the harms of racism included recruiting, retaining, and better-paying Black providers; reviewing, addressing, and eliminating racist practices; and centering Black women in care. Implications: Policymakers and health care systems should consider the participant above recommendations to address the harms of racism. Further research should seek to understand if these or additional domains are identified for individuals in other geographic areas.

  PublisherDOI

• Economic Insecurities and Mental Health Among Low-Income Pregnant People in the Central Valley Region of California

  Women s Health Issues · 2025-02-19 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: The association between economic insecurity and mental health among low-income pregnant people is understudied. We examined the relationship between economic insecurity and perinatal stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms among a low-income, racially/ethnically diverse study population, and differentiated associations by nativity status. METHODS: We used cross-sectional data from the EMBRACE Study that enrolled Medi-Cal (California's Medicaid program) eligible pregnant people in the Central Valley region of California. Economic insecurity was assessed through measures of food insecurity, low financial well-being, inability to pay an emergency expense, inability to pay bills, fear of eviction, and history of homelessness. We examined the association of these measures with perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale), generalized anxiety symptoms (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7), and depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), adjusting for age, relationship status, and education level. We also examined effect measure modification by nativity among the Latinx population. We report the estimated differences and 95% confidence intervals for each exposure and outcome. RESULTS: In our sample of 674 participants, we observed associations between economic insecurity and mental health. Among the 24 models, 15 showed medium to large effects (>0.35 standard deviation differences) and only three showed negligible effect sizes. Across all outcomes, we observed a stronger relationship between economic insecurity and mental health for U.S.-born Latinx people compared with their foreign-born (93% Mexico-born) counterparts. CONCLUSION: We found low-income pregnant people experience significant economic insecurities that may impact mental health adversely. Programs that increase economic supports during pregnancy may serve as important maternal mental health interventions, especially among racial/ethnic minoritized groups.

  PublisherDOI

• Hispanic Patients and Serious Illness Experiences - A Literature Review

  Journal of Pain and Symptom Management · 2025-04-10

  review
  PublisherDOI

• COVID-19 Impact On Black and Latina Women: Pregnancy and Parenting

  Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities · 2025-01-13 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  The coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic presented unique challenges for pregnant women and birthing individuals, particularly those from Black and Latino communities. Understanding the impact of the pandemic on their experiences is crucial for providing adequate support and care during vulnerable times. This research delves into the specific effects of COVID-19 on maternal stress and resilience. We conducted in-depth interviews with a subsample of 19 women from a larger study examining the effects of maternal stress and anxiety, racism, and resilience and coping on pregnancy among Black and Latina pregnant women in the San Francisco Bay Area, a diverse region where nearly two-thirds of residents are people of color. Using thematic analysis, we identified three dominant themes that illuminate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on participants' pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experiences. Firstly, the pandemic shifted participants' focus away from their pregnancy and birth experiences, compelling them to prioritize safety measures against COVID-19 infection. Secondly, the study highlighted the profound value of high-quality, supportive care from healthcare providers during the pandemic, which significantly impacted participants' well-being. Lastly, we uncovered various resilience-building strategies employed by participants to navigate the challenges of pregnancy and parenting during the pandemic. This research provides essential insights into the lived experiences of Black and Latina pregnant women in the San Francisco Bay Area during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings underscore the need for targeted support and interventions to address the unique stressors faced by these communities. By understanding the personal lived experience of Black and Latina participants' pregnancy, birth, and postpartum during the pandemic, healthcare providers and policymakers can develop more tailored and effective approaches to assist and empower Black and Latina pregnant individuals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Experiences of Discrimination in Medical Settings in a Pregnant Population with Low Income

  Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities · 2025-10-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  INTRODUCTION: Discrimination in medical settings (DMS) has been reported in several contexts; however, little is known about its prevalence in pregnant populations with low income. METHODS: We conducted a baseline cross-sectional analysis of participants enrolled in a randomized comparative-effectiveness trial of two forms of enhanced prenatal care among pregnant people in California's San Joaquin Valley with low incomes (the EMBRACE Study). We used the DMS Scale to assess participants' perceived discrimination in medical settings due to race, ethnicity, or color across their lifetime. Demographic and clinical characteristics of participants who had experienced DMS were compared to those of participants who did not report having experienced DMS, using chi-square tests. Predictors of DMS were identified using stepwise logistic regression models. RESULTS: Most of the 652 participants were of color, identifying as Latine (71.9%), Black (7.2%), or another race/ethnicity (9.8%). Half (49.4%) reported having experienced DMS, with Black participants most likely (68.1%) and Latine participants least likely (44.1%) to report it. In adjusted analyses, Latine participants continued to be less likely to report DMS (aOR:0.48; CI:0.25-0.90), while participants with higher educational attainment (some college aOR:1.84; CI:1.19-2.83; college graduate aOR:2.96; CI:1.53-5.73) and who had experienced discrimination in community settings (aOR:2.98; CI:1.90-4.68) were more likely to have experienced DMS. CONCLUSION: Our findings highlight the high prevalence of DMS in a pregnant population with low income. This study adds to existing calls for providers to be mindful of patients' lifetime experiences in the community that may impact their perception of care in medical settings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Palliative Care Availability in America's Top Racially Inclusive Hospitals (RP308)

  Journal of Pain and Symptom Management · 2024-04-18

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rebecca J. Baer

  University of California, San Diego

  35 shared

• Laura L. Jelliffe‐Pawlowski

  University of California, San Francisco

  25 shared

• Deborah Karasek

  23 shared

• J. Dennis Fortenberry

  Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

  22 shared

• Larry Rand

  W. M. Keck Foundation

  21 shared

• Steven E. Kahn

  University of Washington

  19 shared

• Naji Younes

  Milken Institute

  18 shared

• Alice Ma

  Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

  18 shared

Education

• PhD, Public Health Education

  University of North Carolina at Greensboro

  2017

• MPH, Public Health

  California State University Fresno

  2013

Awards & honors

• UCSF-Kaiser Permanente Building Interdisciplinary Research C…