Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA	ScD	05/2005	Social Determinants of Health
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA	MS	12/2004	Health & Social Behavior
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA	MS	05/1999	Epidemiology (Pharmco)
Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT	MPH	05/1992	Psychosocial/Chronic Disease Epidemiology

Dr. Linda Marc is a public health practitioner who is currently the Associate Dean of Public Health Practice & Continuing Education at Walden University, College of Health Sciences. Immediately prior, Dr. Marc was the Associate Vice Chair of Research within the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical Center (2023-2024). At the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, since 2017 she has been faculty for the practicum courses, such as Applied Practice and Integrative Learning Experience for Quantitative Methods, within the Department of Biostatistics. She previously held an appointment as a Lecturer in Public Health Practice at the Yale School of Public Health (2006-2017).

As a practitioner, Dr. Marc is the CEO and Chief Science Officer of Behavioral Science International, LLC (https://behavioralscienceintl.com/), a public health consulting firm, which she founded in 1997 concurrent during her doctoral work at Harvard Chan. Dr. Marc's research interests have included diversity in clinical trials and measurement of patient reported outcomes (i.e., quality of life). A partial list of clients include Aventis,GSK, Pfizer, and Warner Lambert. She was formerly employed as a Scientist/Epidemiologist at Astra Merck, Novarits and Wyeth Ayerst Research. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled, "Social Determinants of Therapeutic Effectiveness During Initial Therapy of HIV-1 Infection, funded by GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Novartis.

From 2017-2021, Dr. Marc was the National Implementation Director of a $21 million ($5.325 million/year) HRSA-funded HIV initiative. She was responsible for the design and delivery of technical assistance to adapt and implement 11 HIV behavioral interventions at 26 Ryan White HIV program-funded sites across the U.S. (including Alaska and Puerto Rico).

From 2011-2017, Dr. Marc was the Education and Curriculum Development Director within the Harvard Center for Public Health, and served as the lead faculty ensuring that topics on social determinants were included in online instructional modules. In this capacity, she concurrently served as an Advisor on HIV and social determinants of health to the Haitian Ministry of Population and Public Health. Haiti projects focused on: (1) the utilization of mental health services for female victims of sexual violence; (2) uptake to post-exposure antiretroviral prophylaxis for victims of sexual violence; (3) measurement of sexual violence amongst internally displaced women living in post-earthquake camps; and (4) measurement of depression in the Haitian LGBT communities in collaboration with the Haiti PEPFAR Team on the first Bio-Behavioral Surveillance Study of MSM in Haiti.

In 2006, Dr. Marc was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce Carlos Guitierrez, to serve as an Advisor to the US Census Bureau on the Race & Ethnicity Advisory Committee (REAC) in the role as Vice-Chair for the African-American Population (2007-2011) (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellaneous/cb12-r42.html).

In 2012 she was re-appointed to the Census Bureau following a restructuring to the newly formed National Advisory Committee on Race, Ethnicity and Other Populations (NAC), to serve as the Convenor of the Race & Hispanic Origin Research Working Group. Throughout her 10 year tenure, these committees were charged to explore alternative approaches for collecting race and ethnicity data from hard-to-reach and hard-to-count populations for the 2010 and 2020 decennial census. Concurrent during this period (2008-2012), Dr. Marc held an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Population & Family Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

With a continued focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social determinants of health, during her appointment as a Lecturer in Public Health Practice at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH, 2006-2017), she served as the Principal Investigator for a DEI initiative as part of strategic planning. Outcomes from this effort improved school governance and spawned new initiatives across YSPH, including diversification of the workforce, promotional opportunities, and equity across YSPH departments (https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/132195/).

• HIV Infection
• Social Determinants of Health
• Quantitative Methods
• Implementation Science