Brian L. Strom is chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) and the executive vice president for health affairs at Rutgers University. Chancellor Strom was formerly the executive vice dean of institutional affairs, 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 Program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, all at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
Chancellor Strom earned a bachelor of science in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1971, and then a medical 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 a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellow in clinical pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. He simultaneously earned a master of public health 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 (CCEB) that he created at Penn includes over 550 faculty, research and support staff, and trainees. At the time he stepped down, CCEB research received nearly $49 million per year in extramural support. Its total budget was approximately $67 million.
Although Chancellor 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 recognized as a founder of this field and for his pioneer work in using large automated databases for research. He is editor of the field’s major text (now in its fifth edition) and editor-in-chief for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. As one of many specific contributions, his research was pivotal in prompting 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. Chancellor Strom has been invited to give more than 400 talks outside his local area, including presentations as the keynote speaker for numerous international meetings. He has been a consultant to NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Pharmacopeia, Association of American Medical Colleges, the Joint Commission, foreign governments, most major pharmaceutical manufacturers, and many law firms.
Chancellor Strom is also a nationally recognized leader in clinical research training. At the Perelman School of Medicine, he developed graduate training programs in epidemiology and biostatistics. More than 625 clinicians have been trained or are in training through the largest of these training programs, which leads to a master of science in clinical epidemiology degree. All but approximately 65 former trainees in this program have appointments in academic or other research institutions. He was principal investigator (PI) or Co-PI of 11 different NIH-funded training grants (T32, D43, K12, and K30), each of which supported clinical epidemiology trainees in different specialties and subspecialties, and has been the primary mentor for more than 40 former and current clinical research trainees and numerous junior faculty members. Internationally, Chancellor Strom was a key contributor to the conceptualization and planning that led to the development of the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN), created in 1979 with support provided by the Rockefeller Foundation to provide clinical research training to clinicians from selected developing country sites. Penn was an INCLEN founding member and one of five training centers. INCLEN Phase I, from 1979 through 1995, resulted in the establishment of 26 clinical epidemiology units in Latin America, India, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The Penn training program alone, led by Chancellor Strom, trained 63 INCLEN trainees.