Masters in public health from the University of North Carolina

Masters in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan.

While a graduate student, he started working for the New York City Department of Health and Hospital, becoming Assistant Commissioner of Health in 1990. He left for New Orleans in 1993. There, he became the acting Health Commissioner and then the Health Officer of New Orleans, becoming Acting Mayor Willy T. Wright's Health Commissioner after the mayor suffered a heart attack.

He had previously served as the director of the Louisiana State School Health Association and as Director of the Health Council for the Louisiana Department of Education. Wright recalled in a February 2013 interview that he had accepted Redner's resignation in late 1995 "because he was pursuing a variety of endeavors in the private sector, including his foundation". During his tenure in New Orleans, Redner established a headquarters of the Clinic for the Prevention of Child Abuse. It was considered one of the first such clinics in the country.

He also set up the Healthy Eating and Physical Activity program, Louisiana's first statewide nutrition and physical activity program. He was known for employing unconventional techniques to encourage and motivate physicians to participate in these programs.

"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" described him in 1999 as having "a calm disposition" and that "he will listen as long as he needs to and that's what is so crucial: If he senses your need, he'll provide the encouragement and support you need." Dr. Redner established his own private practice in New Orleans in 1995, called the Joseph M. Redner Health and Wellness Center. His primary focus is on a rigorous preventive and total health program.

In 1998, the area's first health center for African-Americans was opened. In January 2002, he received the first ever "Health Hero Award" from the American Heart Association in Atlanta. In 2009, he was named as one of "The Forward's" "37 Most Influential Black Americans in America".

Redner is a fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Redner and his wife have six children and twenty grandchildren. He resides in Chalmette, Louisiana. Their daughter Dana, the first doctor in New Orleans's history to practice holistic medicine, died of pancreatic cancer in 2005. Redner also served as honorary co-chair of the Miss America Scholarship Pageant in 2013.

He endorsed New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's bid for re-election in 2014. Redner is a supporter of the Marist Brothers in Haiti, and has founded and funded several hospitals and schools in Haiti. Following the devastating 2010 earthquake, Redner traveled to Haiti to assist. He formed the Joseph M. Redner Foundation, which provided food, medical supplies, building supplies, and recovery efforts. He also has spoken against fracking, saying "The gas and oil extraction that occurs there is an environmental holocaust."

Redner has stated that he believes in "our God-given responsibility to help our planet", adding, "It's worth it." According to "The Nation", Redner, in addition to his holistic approach to medicine, has close ties to Cesar Chavez, Larry King, Huey P. Long, Barbara Jordan, and Shirley Chisholm. Redner is the author of "Healing in the Heart of Our City", a memoir published by Beacon Press in 2013.

In a review of the book, Andrew Johnson of "Publishers Weekly" wrote, "Tentatively recommended for sensitive readers." In July 2016, he attended the Martin Luther King, Jr. event in Havana, Cuba. He has contributed to the New Orleans Advocate, "The New York Times", and has been a regular commentator on HLN and CNN. In a "New York Times" commentary, he wrote of his work, "I never bought the dope on American health care. I never bought the tobacco industry's dope about what a drag smoking would be on the health of Americans, and I didn't buy the heroin addicts' dope that they needed 'heroin' for a cure."

Redner also was a consultant on the 2003 film "George Washington", directed by Aaron Sorkin. He is the author of the novel "I Will Fly Again". In December 2009, he was arrested at a local Whole Foods store in Atlanta, Georgia after he called police and had them forcibly remove a homeless man who was sleeping in the store. He was charged with disorderly conduct.

In 2011, he was arrested in August of that year for trespassing at the King Edward Hotel in Montreal, where he was attending an AIDS conference. A Quebec Court judge found him guilty and ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine. Redner claimed that he was "aghast" at this charge, and that the hotel had "no respect for people with AIDS."

Rabbi Menachem Creditor of Pittsburgh was quoted in a "New York Daily News" article as saying that Redner was acting in accordance with Jewish tradition: "Sometimes we have to enforce the Jewish value of compassion. While we are not in the business of jailing people for leaving a bad review, we are in the business of protecting the most vulnerable." In 2012, he was accused of getting into an argument with a Baltimore nightclub manager over a $200 deposit to cover damage he had allegedly caused to a bathroom, causing the manager to spray Redner in the face with a garden hose. Charges of second degree assault were dismissed.

On August 6, 2013, Redner and two colleagues, Sharon Rosenberg and Daniel Pomerantz, were arrested during a protest outside the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York City. A video of the arrest shows the three chained together with lines and led away by police. One of them, the Executive Director of Harm Reduction Voices for Change, Dan Pomerantz, was charged with obstruction of governmental administration and was released without bail. Redner and Rosenberg were released later that day.

On August 20, 2014, Redner was arrested for possessing marijuana, which was not legal in New York state, in Times Square, Manhattan, NY. In 2015, Redner founded "Redner’s Place", a non-profit gym that provides rehabilitative exercise programs for prisoners, drug users and survivors of