Miriam Cremer

Dr. Miriam Cremer is the President and Founder of BHI. As a medical student in 1997, Cremer completed a clinical rotation in rural El Salvador where she noted the high incidence of cervical cancer among rural women. This motivated her to develop outreach campaigns, and in 2007, she established Basic Health International.

Cremer has provided outstanding guidance and leadership to the organization and has solidified BHI as a leading voice in the fight to eradicate cervical cancer. In addition to her work at BHI, she is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist who has a Fellowship in Family Planning.

She has received multiple grants and awards for public health projects both nationally and internationally, including First Prize for Original Research from the Federation of Latin American Obstetrics and Gynecology (FLASOG) in 1999, Woman of the Year from the Western Center for Law and Poverty in 2005, and Women Making Global Impact in 2013.

Her specific research interests include cervical cancer screening with HPV DNA testing including self-collection, HPV vaccination dissemination, and new methods of cervical cancer pretreatment including non-gas-based ablative treatments.

She was a contributing author of the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines: Use of Cryotherapy for Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia, published in 2011, and is the Principal Investigator on several large trials that are funded by the National Cancer Institute, the Rising Tide Foundation, Gateway for Cancer research and other private donors. In partnership with the El Salvador Ministry of Health, she has been instrumental in helping change the Salvadoran national cervical cancer screening guidelines.

Cremer has been an invited speaker at many national and international conferences, including the African Regional Conference (2014), Eurogin (2015), Point of Care Technologies Conference – NIH (2015), and the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists (2016).