Deborah Kaplan, PA, MPH
Deborah L. Kaplan is the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she has worked since February 2001.
The primary goals of the Bureau are:
- to reduce teen pregnancy,
- to make breastfeeding the norm, and
- to promote health equity for mothers and infants.
The Bureau addresses these goals through a range of initiatives and research, including partnerships with community-based organizations, hospitals and health care providers, and implementation of evidence-based programs. The Bureau’s work and commitment to assuring universal access to confidential, quality reproductive health care for all New Yorkers is exemplified by its’ vision statement
“We envision a world where all people live healthy, fulfilling sexual and reproductive lives and where all children are wanted, born healthy, nurtured and loved.”
Debbie received her Bachelors of Science degree and physician assistant training from Johns Hopkins University, School of Health Services. She holds a Masters degree in Public Health/Community Health Education from Hunter College. She is currently enrolled in the Doctoral in Public Health Program at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She has over thirty years public health experience in clinical care, health education, program development and program leadership, with a focus on adolescent and reproductive health.
Debbie’s focus on sexual and reproductive health stems from her lifelong commitment to and passion for reproductive rights. In 2008, in recognition of her role in shaping public policy in New York State, with her efforts to promote the health of women and their families and to further the goal of universal access to confidential, quality reproductive health care, she was the recipient of the Shirley Gordon Public Policy Leadership Award from the Family Planning Advocates of NYS.
Debbie has spent her entire career in New York City, and has worked in every borough but Staten Island. She has always been committed to work in the public sector, including work at municipal hospitals, school-based health centers, and a residential methadone to abstinence drug treatment program. Prior to employment at the Department Health and Mental Hygiene, Debbie was Program Director of the Brooklyn College Community Partnership for Research and Learning, where she developed initiatives to meet community-defined needs through partnerships and the delivery of services to youth and families in Flatbush and Crown Heights. She worked for seven years overseeing quality assurance and clinical services at Planned Parenthood of New York City. Her clinical and administrative work as a physician assistant included providing school-based health services with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Health Complex in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and as the first Director of the Wingate School Health Clinic at George Wingate High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. She also worked at the DOHMH in the late 1980’s, implementing the first free walk-in pregnancy testing sites, which scheduled or referred teenagers and women for prenatal, family planning and abortion services.
This page last updated February 3, 2009 6:06 .