Dr. Bita Amani serves as Co-Founder and Co-Director of BMHCE and is an Associate Professor at Charles Drew University’s Department of Urban Public Health (CDU’s DUPH).

She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and she was a National Institutes of Mental Health HIV/AIDS Postdoctoral Scholar. Additionally, she serves as Co-Chair of the UCLA-CDU COVID-19 Task Force on Racism & Equity.

As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Amani’s teaching and research focuses on the intersections between community health, racism, politics, and power.

With over fifteen years of local and global experience, her work investigates how social disinvestment (allocating fewer resources to a community) and state-sanctioned violence result in disease and public health crisis.

Dr. Amani’s background puts her in a prime position to co-direct BMHCE.

She prioritizes solutions that strengthen existing community health infrastructures. As a result, she understands the value of collaboration between community midwives, doulas, birth centers, hospitals, and maternity organizations in resolving the Black maternal health crisis.