Eugenia (Gina) South, MD, MS

Vice Chair for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity, Department of Emergency Medicine
Director of the University of Pennsylvania Urban Health Lab
Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine
CHIBE-affiliated faculty member

Eugenia (Gina) South is Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. As a physician-scientist, her broad vision is to improve health and quality of life for residents in low-resource communities through both research and clinical work. Dr. South’s research agenda is focused on better understanding the ways in which the physical and social attributes of where people live, work, and play influence cardiovascular and mental health, substance use, and violent crime by developing and testing individual and neighborhood level interventions. Her work on vacant lot greening has been published in JAMA Network Open, PNAS, and AJPH, as well as been covered by national and international media outlets such as the Washington Post, NPR, and Time Magazine. In 2020, Dr. South also became Director of the University of Pennsylvania Urban Health Lab.

Her current work includes developing a peer-navigator intervention with a behavioral economics framework to increase the amount of time people spend in urban nature, a RWJ funded study to develop and test a new urban microgreen space intervention, a CDC funded study to evaluate the impact of blight remediation and an alternative response unit on opioid overdose in Philadelphia, and a series of studies evaluating the impact of violent crime on acute care utilization. Dr. South received her MD from Washington University School of Medicine in 2008 and her MSHP from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, during which time she was also a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar. Her Twitter handle is: @Eugenia_South.