UPenn Professor Overcomes Odds, Uses Community Research to Study HIV - Higher Education

UPenn Professor Overcomes Odds, Uses Community Research to Study HIV - Higher Education: As a child, Bridgette M. Brawner saw too much—the strewn drug vials and addicts’ discarded needles that littered her playground, the senseless fighting that hit close to home, more kids on the street than in school and adults who had given up on life. For a time, this was Brawner’s world growing up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Even through the bright eyes of a 10-year-old, life in her community looked bleak. It was then that Brawner told herself, “There has to be more than this.”

The single mother who raised Brawner uprooted her young daughter and fled to the suburbs for safety. While Brawner says she was able to escape some of the chaos of the streets, she “never stopped looking back” and caring about the people who were left behind.

“I was young, but I knew even then that I wanted to grow up to do something that could make a difference in the world and in the lives of others,” says Brawner.