Tumaini Rucker Coker, MD, MBA
Tumaini Rucker Coker, MD, MBA is Chief of the Division of General Pediatrics and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s. She is the former and founding Research Director of the Health Equity Research Program at Seattle Children’s Center for Diversity and Health Equity, and currently serves as the Co-Director of the University of Washington’s NIH-funded Child Health Equity Research Fellowship.
Dr. Coker’s research focuses on community-partnered pediatric primary care delivery design to promote health equity and eliminate health and healthcare disparities for Black and Latinx children and families in low-income communities. Her primary research is in partnership with community clinics and the parents they serve, and has focused on the design, implementation, and testing of new models of care that integrate community health workers into the delivery of early childhood preventive care. Dr. Coker has also conducted research to elucidate inequities in behavioral health for Black and Latinx children, with a focus on delivery system interventions needed to improve access and utilization of care.
Her research has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. Dr. Coker served as a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Bright Futures 4th edition National Preventive Care Guidelines Expert Panel. She is currently chair for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Addressing the Long-Term Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families, and is a member of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).
Dr. Coker practices primary care and teaches medical students and residents at Seattle Children’s Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic.
Dr. Coker earned her bachelor degree in Psychology at Stanford University, a masters in business administration at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and her medical degree at the Drew/UCLA Medical Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. She completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and a postdoctoral fellowship with the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty at the University of Washington School of Medicine, she was a faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA for 10 years.