Dr. Will Ross

Board Member

Will Ross, MD, MPH is associate dean for diversity at Washington University School of Medicine and professor of medicine in the Nephrology Division.  For over two decades he has recruited and developed a diverse workforce of medical students, residents and faculty while promoting health equity nationally and globally through collaborations with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and public health officials in Ethiopia, Haiti, and South Africa. As a public health expert he has worked on systems integration and construction of conceptual frameworks to reduce health-care disparities. He is a founding member of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Center for Diversity and Cultural Competence and served on the task force that created the Washington University Institute for Public Health.  He has been instrumental in redesigning local access to health care for the underserved as the founder of the Saturday Free Health Clinic and co-founder of Casa de Salud Health Center. He is also a founding member of the Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, a magnet health professions high school in St. Louis.  Dr. Ross previously served as the chief medical officer and director of ambulatory clinics for the St. Louis Regional Medical Center, the last public hospital in St. Louis. He is a charter and founding member of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission, which has leveraged millions of dollars annually to St. Louis to maintain an integrated network of safety net primary care clinics and public health services.  He served as Chairman of the board of directors of the Missouri Foundation for Health, where he helped create the nonprofit, Health Literacy Missouri.  He is a board member of Better Together St. Louis, Chairman of the St. Louis City Board of Health, and a member of the CDC Health Disparities Committee where he promotes diversity in the public health workforce.  Dr. Ross is the associate editor of the new public health journal, Frontiers in Public Health Education and Promotion .  Dr. Ross has numerous scientific publications and book chapters. He has been honored with the 2005 State of Missouri MLK Distinguished Service in Medicine Award, the 2009 Washington University Medical Center Alumni Faculty Achievement Award, and the 2013 Samuel Goldstein Leadership in Medical Education Award.  A Yale University graduate, he completed medical school at Washington University School of Medicine, an Internal Medicine residency at Vanderbilt University, and a Renal Fellowship at Washington University.  He completed a Master’s of Science in Epidemiology at the Saint Louis University School of Public Health.