Heather H. Burris, MD, MPH, is an attending neonatologist at CHOP Newborn Care and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a core faculty member at the Clinical Futures, a CHOP Research Institute Center of Emphasis.

Dr. Burris is a perinatal researcher motivated by unequal birth outcomes across populations in the United States. She uses molecular epidemiologic approaches to study the intersection of social and environmental factors and how they contribute to birth outcome disparities.

She directs a birth cohort based in Boston where she and her colleagues have recruited more than 950 pregnant women to study psychosocial stress, resilience, and epigenetic biomarkers in mothers and infants. Her team also mines large hospital-based and national population-based datasets to analyze other contributors to unequal perinatal care and outcomes.

Dr. Burris received her medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine and completed her internship and residency at CHOP before moving to Boston for clinical and research fellowships, as well as an MPH in Clinical Effectiveness from Harvard School of Public Health. She returned to CHOP and Penn in 2017.