Draft:Flojaune Cofer

Flojaune Griffin Cofer (born 26 November 1982), known professionally as Dr. Flo Cofer, is a public health advocate and epidemiologist who serves as the Senior Director of Policy for Public Health Advocates in Sacramento, California.

Early life and education
Cofer grew up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania as the daughter of two public school teachers.

Cofer’s father, Raymond “Butch” Griffin, died at 47 of congestive heart failure in 1994 when Cofer was only 11. Her father had been an eighth-grade math teacher and coached girls basketball at Prospect Middle School in Pittsburgh. “He was a big champion of women,” Cofer said of the father who filled her with the belief that she could be anything she wanted to be in life. “His death was one of the roughest times of my life.”

Cofer pursued a career in public health because she believed the public health system had failed her father and many other people. Butch Griffin was a smoker, and he lived in a time before the major tobacco companies were forced by a barrage of lawsuits to curtail their deceptive marketing campaigns that concealed the dangers of cigarette smoking. Black and brown communities like the one Cofer grew up in were target-rich environments for tobacco giants searching for customers. “My dad was failed by policies that didn’t exist to protect him,” Cofer said. “I wanted to better understand public health, what made people healthy and what made them sick.”

Cofer earned a bachelor’s in chemistry at Spelman College, followed by an MPH in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 2006 before going on at Michigan to earn her PhD in epidemiology in 2010.

Cofer first came to Sacramento in 2006, when she was selected for the California Epidemiological Investigation Service Fellowship Program run by the California Department of Public Health. After completing her education, she settled in Sacramento for good in 2010.

Maternal health
In 2011, Cofer began serving as the Preconception Health Coordinator for the University of California San Francisco under contract with the California Department of Public Health in the Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Division. She managed the California Statewide Preconception Health Initiative and was the project manager for the Maternal Quality Indicators Workgroup which oversees statewide maternal health research and surveillance.

Cofer’s first policy job after graduate school was with the California Department of Public Health, as a contractor with UCSF, promoting the health of women of reproductive age by helping communities implement new legislation regarding protections for women’s health. Among its achievements, its recommendations for reproductive health, including free birth control, were included in the preventive services for women that were enacted in 2012 as part of the Affordable Health Care Act.

In 2016, while working for the California Department of Public Health in the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Division, Cofer published a paper on maternal health and pregnancy. The paper provided a review of data related to birth spacing and interpregnancy intervals. Because of the paper's analysis that women with short interpregnancy intervals are more likely to experience adverse maternal and infant outcomes, it has been cited in support of a call for encouragement of optimal birth spacing and the prevention of unintended pregnancies as crucial steps in decreasing overall maternal morbidity and mortality rates.

Equity in healthcare
Cofer started working for Public Health Advocates in 2017. In her work, she furthers the organization’s goals to bring a public health lens to pressing problems by helping communities pass laws, reform systems, and establish norms that foster justice, equity, and health.

Civic advocacy and service
In 2016, Cofer was honored with an Exceptional Women of Excellence Award from the Sac Cultural Hub Media Foundation as part of the 8th Annual Exceptional Women of Color Conference. At the conference, Cofer moderated a discussion on “Using Your Vote Wisely.”

Chair of the Sacramento Measure U Committee
From 2019 to 2022, Cofer served on the City of Sacramento’s e Measure U Community Advisory Committee. The Measure U Committee was created by resolution of the City Council in 2018 with the stated purpose: To ensure that the expenditures of City resources reflect Council and community priorities, the committee shall review, report, and make non-binding recommendations on revenue and expenditures of certain funds from the Transactions and Use Tax (Sacramento City Code chapter 3.27.).

Sacramento Sister Circle Voter Guide
Cofer helped create the Sacramento Sister Circle Voter Guide in partnership with the Sacramento chapter of Black Women Organized for Political Action (BWOPA). The voter guide includes the recommendations for voters from the Sacramento Sister Circle, a group of 10,000 Black women, based on how candidates defend human rights, serve vulnerable populations, and if they support equity.

2024 Campaign for Mayor of Sacramento
In April of 2023, Cofer announced her campaign to become mayor of Sacramento, California, with a primary election date of March 5, 2024.

Cofer finished in the top spot in the March primary, becoming one of the top-two candidates to move on to the general election scheduled for November 5, 2024. Kevin McCarty took Second place in the primary, also moving on to the general election.