An interview with Christopher Forrest
Christopher Forrest, MD, PhD is the Mary D. Ames Professor of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His academic focus is on the theory and measurement of health, pediatric population sciences, transforming children’s health, and informatics innovations in healthcare delivery. He has authored numerous scientific manuscripts and reviews, and his research is supported by a broad mix of funders, including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the California Healthcare Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He leads several large, multi-institutional research efforts that include development and application of child-reported health and well-being outcome measures, child health services research, and using EHR data to transform care. Dr. Forrest and colleagues formed the Pediatric EHR Data Sharing Network (PEDSNet), which includes children’s hospitals and physician practices dedicated to leveraging their EHR data for research and practice improvement. Dr. Forrest received his BA and MD degrees at Boston University as part of a dual-degree program. He trained in pediatrics at CHOP, where he also served as Chief Resident, and completed a PhD in Health Services Research at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
This interview – which was conducted by Shirley Russ, MD, MPH, Health Sciences Professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Attending Physician in the Department of Academic Primary Care Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – is the fourth in a series of interviews with national and international experts in life course health development.
