Lisa Bero

Lisa Anne Bero, born 1958, is an academic who originally trained in pharmacology and went on to a career studying research integrity and how clinical and basic sciences are translated into clinical practice and health policy. Bero is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health and the Chief Scientist of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado. She is also professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Previously, she had been Chair of Medicines Use and Health Outcomes at the University of Sydney. From 1991 until 2014, she was Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy (School of Pharmacy) and in the Institute of Health Policy Studies (School of Medicine) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and is currently an adjunct professor there. She is also Chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) Essential Medicines Committee, She received a National Institute on Drug Abuse postdoctoral fellowship on the molecular basis of opiate addiction, but left basic research for health policy when she received a Pew Health Policy Fellowship in 1988, which included training in epidemiology. Bero explained the impact of this on her career: "I do a lot of work on government committees and international committees. Had it not been for the Pew program I would have been a much more typical academic." Her areas of research have since also included methods for assessing bias and quality of research and scientific publications, and the dissemination and policy implications of research. She is a co-author of The Cigarette Papers, a collection of documents published in 1996 that played a key role in litigation of tobacco companies. It has been called "the Pentagon Papers of tobacco."

After her postdoctoral position, Bero joined the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where she was Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy (School of Pharmacy), Professor in the Institute of Health Policy Studies (School of Medicine), and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy until 2014.

Bero was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education and Practice, which published its report in 2009.

In 2014 Lisa was appointed the inaugural Chair of Medicines Use and Health Outcomes in the Faculty of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney.

In 2011, she became the foundation Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Pharmaceutical Research and Science Policy. The Centre's areas of work are pharmaceuticals (including essential medicines), health systems research and development, and research policy. Bero is one of the Collaboration's two representatives for WHO. She led the development of the Criticism Management System for the Cochrane Library, implemented in 1997.

Bero was the Director of the San Francisco Branch of the United States Cochrane Center from its original establishment as the San Francisco Cochrane Center in 1995, at which time she served with co-director Drummond Rennie, and later Co-Director of the US Cochrane Center. She served on the Collaboration Steering Group from 1996 to 2000, and again from 2004 to 2010. Bero was Co-Chair of the Collaboration from 2013 to 2017. Harold S. Luft Award for Mentoring in Health Services and Health Policy Research in 2009. She was the first recipient of this award by the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.