The Presidential Professorship of Family Medicine and Community Health

Presidential Professorships are awarded to exceptional scholars of any rank who will contribute to the diverse experiences, perspectives, and eminence of Penn faculty. They were established in 2011 to strengthen the University’s ability to recruit, retain and mentor distinguished scholars who are preeminent in their fields and have demonstrated a commitment to sustaining an inclusive and vibrant academic community.

Current Chairholder 

J. Deanna Wilson, MD, MPH

J. Deanna Wilson, MD, MPH, is the Presidential Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health. She joins Penn from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where she served as an Assistant Professor in Medicine and Pediatrics, amongst other leadership positions.

Dr. Wilson’s clinical expertise is in addiction medicine across the life-spectrum (including substance use and substance use disorder treatment in adolescents and young adults), addiction medicine in office-based and hospital-based settings. Her research leverages traditional health services research methods, community-engaged research methods, and implementation science to build health equity for marginalized and racially minoritized populations who use drugs. Dr. Wilson’s work focuses on examining how best to integrate harm reduction into primary care and hospital-based settings, hot to develop low threshold models of care to improve engagement and retention of often marginalized and racially and ethnically minoritized populations, and how to improve engagement and retention of adolescents and young adults in opioid use disorder treatment.

Following her undergraduate education at Swarthmore College, Dr. Wilson attended the Yale University School of Medicine for her MD, and then went onto Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Policy where she received her MPH with a concentration in social and behavioral sciences. She continued at Johns Hopkins with an internship and residency (chief resident) in internal medicine-pediatrics, and a fellowship in adolescent medicine. She also served as the Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow at the Congressional Hunger Center in Washington, DC.

Dr. Wilson is certified by American Boards of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Preventive Medicine in Addiction Medicine and Pediatrics in Adolescent Medicine. She is a member of the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Society of Addiction Medicine, AMERSA, and the Society for General Internal Medicine. Amongst Dr. Wilson’s many awards and honors are the HEAL Director’s Award for Community Partnership and American Board of Addiction Medicine Next Generation Award. She has been published in renowned peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Addiction Medicine, Journal of Correctional Health, amongst others.