Rebecca A. Karb, MD, PhD

Rebecca Karb, MD, PhD is the co-director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at Rhode Island Hospital and co-director of the stroke center at The Miriam Hospital, where she focuses on inequities in acute stroke care. She is also the medical director for the Lifespan Community Health Worker program and Community Outreach, an attending physician in emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, and an assistant professor at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Her work focuses on social emergency medicine and health equity initiatives, specifically community health worker/peer recovery programs, homelessness and street medicine, and emergency department-based programs to address health-related social needs.

Dr. Karb serves as the medical director of the Lifespan Community Health Worker Program and Community Outreach. In this role, she has helped to establish and grow an emergency department-based CHW/PRS program, the goal of which is to address social needs and facilitate substance use disorder treatment. Dr. Karb also works with local community organizations that provide street outreach to the unsheltered homeless population. She is currently leading a grant-funded project to create a Street Medicine Program with the goal of bringing trauma-informed medical care to the streets of Providence and Pawtucket. 

A Phi Beta Kappa scholar, Dr. Karb earned a master’s degree in social work and a doctoral degree in social work and sociology from the University of Michigan with a focus on neighborhood, racial, and socioeconomic health inequities. She subsequently obtained her medical degree at Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in emergency medicine at Brown. She is a board certified in emergency medicine (BCEM) diplomate with the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Karb is a member of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).