New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
HPDP - Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control
2 Lafayette Street
New York,
NY
USA
10007
Email:
lsilver@health.nyc.gov
Biographical Sketch:
Lynn Silver, MD, MPH, FAAP is, since February 2004, Assistant Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control. The bureau currently covers seven areas relevant to chronic disease: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, asthma, physical activity and nutrition, health promotion at the workplace and improvement of clinical systems for chronic disease care, and is coordinating the Department’s response to the obesity epidemic.
Dr. Silver was previously Visiting Scholar at the Division of International Health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (2002-2003) where she worked on issues of civil society and health systems and on pharmaceutical policy. She is also Adjunct Professor and former director of the School of Health Sciences of the University of Brasilia in Brazil (1997-2002), and a former Senior Researcher at the National School of Public Health of Brazil/ Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz (1989-1996) where she was the director of the postgraduate programs in Health Administration and Planning. She has worked extensively with the consumer movement internationally and in Brazil and the United States on health policy, and pharmaceutical and food security issues. She also worked at Public Citizen Health Research Group in Washington, DC and as a Fellow in International Health at the Pan American Health Organization. Dr. Silver has acted as a consultant to a number of governments and organizations including the Office of Technology Assessment, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Kellogg Foundation, the Ford Foundation and others on health policy issues. Her work has received support from the Ford, MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations as well as the International Development Research Centre of Canada and the World Bank. She received, as Principal Investigator, the Rockefeller’s International Award for Health Research for Development in 2000. She has over 90 publications, most of which are directed at consumers on health or pharmaceutical issues. Dr. Silver was born and raised in New York City, received her MD and MPH degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1983, and trained in pediatrics at Babies Hospital of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.