Dr. Judith LaRosa's career has spanned education, research, and clinical practice. Her present position is vice dean and professor, SUNY Downstate Graduate Program in Public Health, where her current research focuses on cultural perceptions of health and disease. Prior to this, she served as professor and chair, Department of Community Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and Director, Tulane Xavier National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. From 1991-1994, she was the first Deputy Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health, National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a co-author of the legislatively mandated 1994 NIH Guidelines on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research. From 1978-1991, Dr. LaRosa served at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) as the first Coordinator of the NHLBI Workplace Initiative in CVD Risk Factor Reduction. In 1990, she was appointed as the designer and first Coordinator of the National Heart Attack Alert Program -- a national education program to reduce time to treatment at the first signs of a heart attack. Dr. LaRosa has served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Understanding the Biology of Sex and Gender as well as the Committee on Assessing the Medical Risks of Human Oocyte Donation for Stem Cell Research; the National Institute for Nursing Research’s Advisory Council; the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board; and the National Science Foundation/Institute of Medicine Committee on Defense Women’s Health Research. She was a member of the U.S. Army Research and Materiel Command/ United Information Systems, Inc., core directorate to design and implement the Department of Defense (DoD) breast cancer and defense women’s health grant review process. Dr. LaRosa has served as a scientific reviewer for the NIH, CDC, and DoD. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Community Health. Dr. LaRosa received her bachelor of science degree in nursing and her, master of nursing education degree from the University of Pittsburgh and her PhD in health education from the University of Maryland.
