Charles Leonard, PharmD, MSCE is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is an Executive Committee Member and a faculty member of the Center for Real-World Effectiveness and Safety of Therapeutics, a faculty member in the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, a Fellow of the Institute on Aging, and an affiliate member of the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology, all at Penn. Dr. Leonard is a Special Government Employee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is an honorary lecturer at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences.
Dr. Leonard is a pharmacoepidemiologist with extensive expertise in post-market prescription drug safety, causal inference methods, and real-world evidence (RWE) generation. He is internationally recognized for his work in the comparative safety of medical products among minority and economically-disadvantaged populations. He has presented his transdisciplinary work to: clinical and scientific audiences at national and international conferences, federal regulators and policymakers at the U.S. FDA, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, AHRQ, CDC colleagues at universities and institutes at home and abroad, and clinical decision support stakeholders at health information technology firms.
Dr. Leonard’s scientific contributions aim to generate RWE and close knowledge gaps in four major areas of post-market prescription drug safety: 1) population health effects of drug interactions 2) comparative safety of antidiabetes drugs 3) drug-induced sudden cardiac arrest and 4) methods development in pharmacoepidemiology. His research is principally funded by the National Institutes of Health.