Prof. Brian Strom
BRIAN L. STROM, M.D., M.P.H. is George S. Pepper Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, the Executive Vice Dean of Institutional Affairs, and Professor of Biostatistics & Epidemiology, Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Pharmacology, all at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He formerly was Founding Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Founding Director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Founding Director of the Graduate Group in Epidemiology & Biostatistics.
Dr. Strom earned a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1971, and then an M.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1975. From 1975-1978 he was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine and from 1978-1980 he was an NIH fellow in Clinical Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. He simultaneously earned an M.P.H. Degree in Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine since 1980. The Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics that he has created at Penn includes over 550 faculty, research and support staff, and trainees. At the time Dr. Strom stepped down, CCEB research received nearly $49 million/year in extramural support. Its total budget was approximately $67 million. More than 560 clinicians have been trained or are in training through the CCEB’s Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology degree program, which he founded. All but 65 have appointments in academic or other research institutions. In this process, Dr Strom has become a leader in the rigorous formal training of clinical researchers.
Although Dr. Strom's interests span many areas of clinical epidemiology, his major research interest is in the field of pharmacoepidemiology, i.e., the application of epidemiologic methods to the study of drug use and effects. He is editor of the field's major text (now in its fifth edition), and is now Editor-in-Chief for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. He is probably best known as a founder of the field of pharmacoepidemiology, and a pioneer in using large automated databases for research. As one of many specific contributions, his work was pivotal in getting the American Heart Association and American Dental Association to reverse 50 years of guidelines, and recommend against use of antibiotics to prevent infective endocarditis, instead of recommending for this widespread practice. In addition to writing more than 580 papers, and 14 books, he has been principal investigator for more than 275 grants, including over $115 million in direct costs alone. Dr. Strom has also made substantial contributions to many additional extramurally-funded grants. Recent grants included an NCI Program Project Grant on Molecular Susceptibility to Hormone-Induced Cancers, awards from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality for a Center for Research and Education on Therapeutics (CERTs), a Center of Excellence for Patient Safety Research and Practice, and a center within the Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness (DEcIDE) Network. He has been invited to more than 400 talks outside his local area, including being the keynote speaker for numerous international meetings. Dr. Strom has been a consultant to NIH, FDA, CDC, USP, AAMC, JCAHO, foreign governments, most major pharmaceutical manufacturers, and many law firms.
Dr. Strom was a member of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians, the Board of Directors of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and the Board of Directors for the American College of Epidemiology, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Association for Patient-Oriented Research. He was previously President of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and the Association for Clinical Research Training. Dr. Strom was on the Drug Utilization Review Committee and the Gerontology Committee of the United States Pharmacopoeia. He served on the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee for the US Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Strom was Chair of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Assess the Safety and Efficacy of the Anthrax Vaccine, Chair of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Smallpox Vaccine Program Implementation, and was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Review the CDC Anthrax Vaccine Safety and Efficacy Research Program. He recently chaired the Institute of Medicine Committee to Review NIOSH’s Traumatic Injury Program and was then a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines. He now chairs the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Consequences of Reducing Sodium in the Population.
Dr. Strom is a member of the American Epidemiology Society, and is one of a handful of clinical epidemiologists ever elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Association of Physicians. He has also been an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences since 2001. Dr. Strom received the 2003 Rawls-Palmer Progress in Medicine Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, the Naomi M. Kanof Clinical Investigator Award of the Society for Investigative Dermatology, the George S. Pepper Professorship of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, and in 2006 he received the Sustained Scientific Excellence Award from the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. In addition, Dr. Strom was named the 2008 recipient of the John Phillips Memorial Award for Outstanding Work in Clinical Medicine. This award is from the American College of Physicians (ACP) and is considered to be one of the highest awards in Internal Medicine. Dr. Strom also received the 2013 Association for Clinical and Translational Science/American Federation for Medical Research National Award for Career Achievement and Contribution to Clinical and Translational Science for translation from clinical use into public benefit and policy. Penn awards that Dr. Strom has received include the Class of 1992 Class Teaching Award and the Samuel Martin Health Evaluation Sciences Research Award. Dr. Strom received the 2004 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award, the University’s most prestigious teaching award, in recognition of the contribution he has made in his career to clinical research teaching.