PHILADELPHIA — Jennifer Prah Ruger, PhD, MSc, MA, MSL, associate professor of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, has been elected to membership on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent, nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to providing resources that help members, government agencies and other interested citizens better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.
Founded in 1921, the CFR promotes the interest and development of expertise in the next generation of foreign policy leaders. The organization supports a Studies Program that fosters independent research, enabling CFR scholars to produce articles, reports, and books and hold roundtables that analyze foreign policy issues and make concrete policy recommendations. The CFR currently has over 4,700 members including government officials, scholars, business leaders, journalists, lawyers, and other distinguished nonprofit professionals.
Dr. Ruger received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Berkeley, master’s degrees from Oxford University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Yale University, and a doctoral degree from Harvard University. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard's Center for Population and Development Studies, she served on the health and development satellite secretariat of WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland's Transition Team before working as a health economist at the World Bank. She later served as Speechwriter to President James D. Wolfensohn.
A member of the Institute of Medicine's Board on Global Health, Dr. Ruger served previously on the Ethics Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee to the Director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Institute of Medicine's Committee to Evaluate The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Dr. Ruger has been recognized by many professional and scientific societies. She was previously the recipient of the Greenwall Faculty Scholar Award in Bioethics and a Donaghue Investigator Award in ethics and economics of health disparities. Dr. Ruger has published work on the ethics and economics of health policy and public health, including equity and efficiency of health system access, financing, resource allocation, policy reform and the social determinants of health. In 2011, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship which allowed her to write her forthcoming book, Global Health Justice and Governance (Oxford University Press) in which she develops a theoretical framework for global health. Dr. Ruger’s research is conducted nationally and internationally, including work in India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Morocco, South Africa, South Korea, the United States, and Vietnam.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
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