John E. Brewer ’74M (MD)
Dr. John Brewer has dedicated his career to providing quality health care to medically underserved people. Devoted to community service, he has done volunteer work at Chicuque Rural Hospital in Mozambique, directed a student run summer migrant clinic in Michigan, and participated in clinics for the homeless. A family practitioner for more than 30 years, Dr. Brewer is a passionate advocate and teacher of family medicine. He has developed and taught courses in international health, caring for the underserved, rural health, and health disparities. In his first six years of practice, he served in highly impoverished areas of Africa and Appalachia. His practice has focused on the needs of the urban poor and refugees in Michigan and Buffalo. Earlier this year, he discontinued his clinical practice to develop a new palliative medicine consultation service for non-hospitalized patients.
Dr. Brewer received his bachelor’s degree from Denison University in 1970 and earned his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1974. He completed his residency in family medicine at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, New Jersey, in 1977. He then served for two years as a missionary physician at Bambur General Hospital in Gongola State, Nigeria. From 1980 to 1984, he was a family physician at Laurel Fork-Clear Fork Health Centers in Clairfield, Tennessee, an area known for coal mining, where he provided care for a rural population at three mountain clinics.
In 1984, Dr. Brewer returned to Michigan and joined the Academic Family Practice at Michigan State University/Saint Lawrence Family Health Center. He managed that University’s urban family medicine residency program until 1993. When he and his wife relocated to Buffalo, he accepted a teaching position in the Department of Family Medicine at State University of New York at Buffalo and a clinical practice and Medical Director position at the Upper Westside Family Health Center. For the past nine years, Dr. Brewer was Medical Director and physician at Niagara Family Health Center, an urban family practice in Buffalo.
Dr. Brewer is a member of several distinguished professional organizations and is a diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners. He is a former board member of the Ingham County Board of Health and also served on the board of Friends of ASPIRE, a proposed charter school for immigrant and refugee children in Buffalo.
Dr. Brewer and his wife, Carol, a professor of nursing at University of Buffalo, live in Clarence, New York. They have two grown children, Adam and Katherine.