Brian Strom: Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs in the School of Medicine and Senior Advisor to the Provost for Global Health Initiatives
September 18, 2007, Volume 54, No. 4	Print Issue

Dr. Brian Strom, George S. Pepper Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Chair and Professor of Biostatistics & Epidemiology, and Director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, has been additionally appointed to the newly created positions of Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs in the School of Medicine and Senior Advisor to the Provost for Global Health Initiatives. He assumed his new positions last Wednesday.  

As Vice Dean, Dr. Strom will lead the School of Medicine’s longstanding relationship with the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center.  He will also play a central role in developing the research and educational missions of the Center for Public Health Initiatives, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and new Biomedical Informatics Initiative.

As Senior Advisor to the Provost, Dr. Strom will work closely with the provost, deans, and provost’s senior leadership team to implement the University’s global health initiatives. He will coordinate public health activities across the University, help the provost develop and fund new programs, and work with key groups to advance Penn’s commitment to public health, global health, and health services research. 

“Brian will be a tremendous partner in all our public health initiatives, across the University and around the world,” said Provost Ronald J. Daniels.  “He’s the right person at the right time. His appointment to these new roles both recognizes his outstanding leadership and gives us all an opportunity to advance our collaborative work in this vital area.”

“Brian is an accomplished leader who knows well how to forge collaborative relationships,” said Arthur Rubenstein, Dean of the School of Medicine and Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.  “His skill and experience will be a great asset to both the University and the PVAMC as we work to further enhance this critically important relationship.” 

Dr. Strom is a global leader in pharmacoepidemiology research, the application of epidemiologic methods to the study of drug use and effects.  As an editor and an author of Pharmacoepidemiology, the field’s major text (now in its fourth edition), he has written or co-written 475 papers, been principal investigator of over 200 grants, and served as president of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology and editor for the Americas for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, its official journal. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and one of only a handful of clinical epidemiologists ever elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Association of Physicians.

A faculty member of the School of Medicine since 1980, and winner of a 2004 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, he earned a M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980; an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1975; and a B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University in 1971.