Ryan Richard Ruff, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor and Chief of the Division of Community Oral Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. An epidemiologist and education researcher, Dr. Ruff studies how scalable, school-based healthcare delivery systems influence oral health, academic performance, and quality of life. Dr. Ruff is the PI of the PRISMS Lab (Pragmatic Research for Innovative and Sustainable Medicine in Schools), specializing in the use of pragmatic clinical trials and community-based participatory research to test minimally invasive, sustainable approaches to disease prevention in real-world settings. PRISMS studies follow one of three complementary models: (1) development and evaluation of new school-based health programs; (2) partnership with existing school health systems to embed novel community trials; and (3) secondary analysis of large-scale archival school health data. Ruff has received over $22MM in funding as a principal investigator from the NIMHD, NIDCR, and PCORI and published in journals including JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Network Open, and the Education Policy Analysis Archives.
Dr. Ruff received his PhD in Research, Statistics, and Evaluation from the University of Virginia, his MPH in Epidemiology from Harvard University, and his MPhil in Education from Cambridge. He was named a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology in 2022.