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Dr. Mark A. Schuster is the William Berenberg Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and chief of general pediatrics and vice chair for health policy research in the department of medicine at Children's Hospital Boston. Prior to moving to Boston, he held similar positions at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine and was director of health promotion and disease prevention at the RAND Corporation, where he held the RAND Distinguished Chair in Health Promotion. He also was founding director of the UCLA/RAND Center for Adolescent Health Promotion, a community-based participatory research center funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Dr. Schuster conducts research primarily on child, adolescent, and family issues. Currently, he is leading studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop and evaluate a worksite-based parenting program for parents of adolescents to learn communication skills and foster healthy sexual development and sexual risk prevention, partner with L.A. Unified School District to promote healthy eating and physical activity among youth, examine the impact of California's new Paid Family Leave Act on families of children with chronic illness, and understand the issues experienced by children with HIV-infected parents. He is head of the L.A. site of the CDC-funded "Healthy Passages," which seeks to identify personal, family, school, and community influences on substance use, violence, injuries, physical activity, nutrition, sexual behavior, and mental/physical health by studying over 5,000 ten-year olds in three cities regularly to age 20. In addition, he has studied quality of health care, childhood immunizations, anticipatory guidance, injury prevention, and the effects of terrorist attacks on stress and coping.

Dr. Schuster is a member of the board of the Academic Pediatric Association and chair of its Public Policy and Advocacy Committee.  He served as a commissioner on the Los Angeles City Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families and chaired its Health and Nutrition Committee. In Boston, he is currently a member of the Mayor's Task Force on Improving Primary Care Access. He recently served as a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Adolescent Health Care Services and Models of Care for Treatment, Prevention, and Healthy Development. Dr. Schuster is co-author of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask): The Secrets to Surviving Your Child's Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens (Crown, 2003) and co-editor of Child Rearing in America: Challenges Facing Parents of Young Children (Cambridge University Press, 2002).  He is the 2003 winner of the Nemours Child Health Services Research Award from AcademyHealth.

Dr. Schuster received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Yale, his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, his master of public policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and his doctoral degree from RAND Graduate School. He did his pediatrics residency at Children's Hospital Boston and his fellowship with the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA.