Sarah Brown was until June 2015 the CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a private and independent non-profit organization working to promote values, behavior, and policies that reduce both teen pregnancy and unplanned pregnancy, especially among single, young adults. Under her leadership, The National Campaign played a major role in the nation's 60 percent decline in teen births since 1991, and the group has been widely recognized with many awards (over 100 as of Dec 2016) including, most recently, being named as one of ten semi-finalists in the annual Peter F. Drucker award for non-profit innovation. Under Brown's leadership, over $75 million was raised to support the organization from a wide variety of sources including private foundations, public sources of support (both state and federal) and individual gifts.
Before helping to establish the Campaign in 1996, Brown was a senior study director at the Institute of Medicine (a component of the National Academy of Sciences), where she directed numerous studies in the broad field of maternal and child health. Her last major report there resulted in the landmark book, The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-being of Children and Families. She has served on advisory boards of many influential national organizations including the Guttmacher Institute, the Population Advisory Board of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Harvard University Working Group on Early Life and Adolescent Health Policy, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the D.C. Mayor’s Committee on Reducing Teenage Pregnancies and Out-of Wedlock Births. She appeared often in print, broadcast, and online media.
Brown has received numerous awards, including named lectureships at Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown and other universities; the Institute of Medicine’s Cecil Award for Excellence in Research; the Martha May Elliot Award of the American Public Health Association; the John MacQueen Award for Excellence in Maternal and Child Health from the Association of Maternal and Child Health Program; and the Harriet Hylton Barr Distinguished Service Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time of her retirement, the Board of The National Campaign established an honorary fund in her name to recognize future innovation in the broad field of pregnancy planning and prevention. She also serves on a number of non-profit boards that focus on women’s heath and several other issues as well.
Brown holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University (in history, cum laude) and a Masters of Science in Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina (in epidemiology and biostatistics, cum laude). She lives in Washington and in New Hampshire with her husband, Winthrop Brown. They have three grown daughters and five grandchildren.