Jean Ford, MD

Jean G. Ford, MD, was appointed senior associate dean of the Barbados campus for Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) effective March 2023. In this role, Dr. Ford leads the RUSM campus team in fostering an environment that values diversity; promotes student, faculty, and colleague engagement and success; and engages as a socially responsible member of the community.

Dr. Ford is a physician educator and a clinical investigator with more than 30 years of experience in medical practice, education, and leadership. He began his career as a faculty member at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, where he rose through the ranks to serve as chief of the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Harlem Hospital Center and director of the training program in pulmonary diseases. While at Columbia/Harlem Hospital, he served as principal investigator of the New York Center of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s Asthma Clinical Research Network.

Subsequently, he served as an associate professor of epidemiology, medicine, and oncology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and was the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center to Reduce Cancer Disparities. Thereafter, he served as chair of medicine at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York, and then at the Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Most recently, Dr. Ford has served a predominantly rural population as a practicing pulmonologist at the Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot, Idaho. He has led numerous clinical and community-based programs and research that address clinical problems and disparities related to respiratory diseases — especially asthma — and cancer. He has also contributed to global health and advocacy programs in Southern Africa, Central America, Guantanamo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and in his native country, Haiti. Additionally, Dr. Ford has published more than 115 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and received numerous grant awards from philanthropic foundations, as well as peer-reviewed grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.

Dr. Ford earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Columbia University and a Doctor of Medicine from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. He completed his residency at Harlem Hospital Center and his fellowship in pulmonology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.