As of February 2009, Alan Geller recently joined the Division as the Deputy Director of Public Health Practice and Senior Research Scientist. For the past 23 years, he was on staff and faculty at the Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH) as Research Associate Professor of Dermatology (BUSM) and Epidemiology (BUSPH). His research interests and passions include cancer screening, cancer and health disparities, tobacco in low-SES populations, medical education and public health workforce issues, melanoma, community-based participatory research, and childhood obesity. He has been a Principal Investigator on grants funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Protection Agency, the National Cancer Institute, the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute (FAMRI), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, American Academy of Dermatology, and the MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation (among others). He has provided consultation for the American Medical Association on tobacco teaching in medical schools as well as the development of sun awareness programs for the EPA and CDC. He has also played a strong role in the mentoring of post-doctoral students, as well as junior faculty and students from Schools of Public Health and Medicine at Boston University and Harvard for manuscript preparation..

Currently, he is involved in a wide range of national and international projects. He is a Co-Investigator on the Division's initiative MassCONECT 4 Kids, a randomized trial designed to increase the number of smoke-free homes in Boston, Lawrence, and Worcester. This study unites community partners from the parent MassCONECT grant as well as directors and staff from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Early Intervention Program. As well, he has joined the Community Engagement and Research Core of the Harvard Catalyst program. Following his long-standing interest in melanoma screening, he is working with colleagues at the HMO Cancer Research Network to design both a pilot and large-scale randomized trial to test the effectiveness of the clinician skin exam coupled with skin self-examination. He is also leading the effort to evaluate melanoma screening data from Germany, where a major national screening campaign is underway. In his work under the auspices of the FAMRI grant, he has completed a national survey of the smoking cessation practices of in-patient pediatric nurses while working with nurses at Boston Children's Hospital to develop a pilot nurse and hospital-wide cessation program for the parents of hospitalized children.

He greatly enjoys all aspects of major screening and public health campaigns, particularly study design, evaluation, and project management as well as initiating the collaborations inherent to the formation of these projects and campaigns. He looks forward to expanding current Division work as well as exploring new research in global health disparities and screening, public health leadership, and the training of a public health workforce.

MPH, 1990, Epidemiology, Boston University
RN, 1984, Mass Bay Community College