Kent Garber, MD, MPH

Biography

Dr. Garber was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 2007 with a B.A. in Linguistics. From 2007 to 2010, he worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., covering politics and health policy. He then attended Harvard Medical School and completed his general surgery training at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2021.

He worked with the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa health team, conducted health system research in Iraq and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, and earned an MPH during his residency at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Drawing upon his journalism and public health backgrounds, his research interests have focused on assessing the effectiveness of large-scale health interventions in conflict-affected countries and improving healthcare for civilian populations in these settings.

Over the past five years, he has provided technical and data analytical support to World Bank collaborations with WHO and UNICEF in Yemen and South Sudan, focusing on strengthening data collection and analyses to assess programming impact and healthcare delivery better. His work incorporates complex household and facility-based survey design, geospatial analysis, quality and cost assessments, and other rapid data collection and longitudinal data analysis approaches.

Clinically, Dr. Garber's interests span the full spectrum of acute care surgery, surgical critical care, and trauma surgery, with a particular interest in caring for complex and critically ill surgical patients and UCSF/ZSFG's commitment to healthcare equity. Reflecting on his fellowship experience at UCSF, he says, "I am so grateful to the incredibly dedicated group of skilled, thoughtful surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, and staff who have trained me here, and I am thrilled to be staying on as part of this family."