Battle Brenda

Brenda Battle

Retired Senior Vice President, Community Health Transformation and Chief Equity Officer, UChicago Medicine

Brenda A. Battle is a senior executive and experienced board member with a successful history of designing and executing evidence-based interventions and leading efforts to understand and reduce disparities in health and health care for vulnerable populations. Brenda has a strong track record of building and sustaining effective asset-based collaborations that are outcomes driven. Over 30 years of experience in examining how specific policies adversely affect vulnerable populations and exploring inequities from a policy and business perspective. Brenda is effective at analyzing factors impacting stakeholder populations and leading efforts to improve organizational policies and procedures, and developing advocacy interventions to impact the health of vulnerable populations.

Among her senior executive roles, Brenda served as Senior Vice President for Community Health Transformation, and Chief Equity Officer for the University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences Division (UCM) where she was responsible for leading enterprise-wide efforts to design UCM’s community health impact strategies, develop and implement coordinated, innovative healthcare solutions to address health care disparities and foster innovation in UCM’s care delivery system by crafting care models that promote equity. Brenda led UCM’s efforts to integrate the resources and strategies of the UChicago Medicine with the assets and resources of the community to meet the healthcare needs of populations served by the UCM system. She oversaw UChicago Medicine’s Urban Health Initiative (UHI) which facilitates and coordinates fundamentally transformative efforts to address complex health and social needs of residents on the South Side of Chicago by bringing a collaborative, community-based, and participatory problem-solving approach to the health and social needs of UCM’s patients and the broader community.

Brenda was the Founding Director of Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s Center for Diversity and Cultural Competence, the medical center’s health disparities solution center. Brenda was responsible for developing and implementing Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s strategy for addressing health disparities by building a culturally and linguistically competent organization with a goal of eliminating variations/gaps in care for vulnerable populations served. In this role, Brenda implemented system wide diversity, cultural competence and health literacy programs, community benefit initiatives, and education and training programs across the Washington University Medical Center campus, St. Louis Children's Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

Brenda served as Executive Vice President for Government and Community Affairs, for Medical Transportation Management, Inc. (MTM), a national non-emergent medical transportation company focused on addressing the social determinants of health created by disparities in access to health. Brenda was responsible for leading MTM’s legislative, regulatory, and policy initiatives across the nation. She was responsible for both state and federal government affairs.

Brenda also held several leadership roles in Managed Care operations for both government sponsored (Medicaid and Medicare Managed Care) and commercial managed care organizations.

Brenda holds a Master of Business Administration from Maryville University, St. Louis, Missouri, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Goldfarb School of Nursing, St. Louis, Missouri.

Brenda has authored three book chapters in nursing text books, published several academic papers, and op-eds. She is a national speaker on health equity and the social determinants of health