Soko Setoguchi, MD, DrPH

ss2894@rwjms.rutgers.edu, (848) 932-6507

Soko Setoguchi, MD, DrPH is a cardiologist by training, board-certified internist, and epidemiologist, is Professor of Medicine, Director of Clinical Research Education, Director of Clinician Researcher Track, Medicine Residency Program, Department of Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) and Professor of Epidemiology at Rutgers School of Public Health. She is also Co-Director of the Master of Science in Clinical and Translational Science (MS-CTS) at Rutgers School of Graduate Studies. After her medical school and training in Cardiology in Japan, she completed her doctoral training in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. She was on the research faculty in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and at Duke Clinical Research Institute. She then completed US residency training in Internal Medicine at University of North Carolina Hospital, Chapel Hill (2014-2016) and RWJMS in 2017.

Dr. Setoguchi is recognized as an international leader in the field of pharmacoepidemiology and comparative effectiveness research studying the health effects of medications, medical devices, and other medical products in populations. She has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed papers in leading medical journals and has been funded by both federal and non-federal sources for her pharmacoepidemiology research program. Her research uses real world data to perform health services and outcomes research and comparative effectiveness research for medications and implantable medical devices in patients with chronic disease. Her work is internationally regarded for its methodological rigor and creativity. Her research not only produced critical evidence to improve health outcomes of patients, but also advanced the methods in pharmacoepidemiology using large databases through new approaches linking multiple databases, linking mothers and babies within databases, and developing creative study designs and applications of sophisticated methods. As she tackled important research questions, she used, promoted, and developed/tested new design-based methods and statistical methods as needed to conduct valid studies providing these answers.

Dr. Setoguchi has led multiple initiatives and activities within the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology, serving as chair/member of the organizing committee for the annual international and Asian conferences and director of educational sessions for Asian conferences. She has been a member of several national committees and boards, including FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, review panels for NIH, PCORI, and AHRQ, and the editorial board for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.

She recently completed US residency training, pursuing her passion for patient care and conducting clinically relevant research as a clinician-scientist. In her new role as a clinician-scientist, she has been developing and directing new initiatives for clinical research education for medical trainees and has led an NIH training grant application to support residents to conduct mentored research during residency. In 2019, she has created Clinician Researcher Track in Medicine residency program at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. As the Co-Director of the MSCTS program at Rutgers School of Graduate Studies, she has remade the program and rolled out the new MSCTS Clinical Research Track to inspire and train the next generation of clinician-scientists.