Pamela G. Russo
Senior Program Officer
Pamela Russo, M.D., M.P.H., senior program officer, is a member of the Public Health Team, which is committed to strengthening the public health system to enable it to protect Americans from threats such as bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases to health problems such as obesity, tobacco use, and asthma. Russo believes that Foundation initiatives in population health have the potential to “affect the health of large numbers of people and change the face of public health in this country.”
In addition to being a member of the Public Health Team, Russo serves as the senior program officer for the Health & Society Scholars Program, an ongoing Foundation national program that enables more than 18 outstanding individuals annually who have completed doctoral training to engage in an intensive two-year program at one of six nationally prominent universities. This innovative program seeks to produce leaders who will change the questions asked, the methods employed to analyze problems, and the range of solutions offered to improve the health of all Americans. Russo also oversees the Foundation’s Young Epidemiology Scholars (YES) Program, a program she developed, designed, and implemented. YES seeks to attract exceptional high school students to the field of public health by offering scholarships of up to $50,000 that are awarded for original research projects that use epidemiological methods to study a health problem.
Russo came to the Foundation in November 2000 from the Cornell University Medical Center in New York City, where she was an associate professor of medicine, director of the clinical outcomes section, and program co-director for the master’s program and fellowship in clinical epidemiology and health services research.
She earned an M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed her residency in primary care general internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, followed by a fellowship in clinical epidemiology and rheumatology at Cornell University Medical Center and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She earned an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health and a B.S. from Harvard College.
Born in Michigan, Russo now lives in Princeton with her husband, Carlo Russo, M.D., a leading expert in immunology and vaccine development, and their two children, Mario and Martina. She enjoys camping, biking and modern dance.