Harvard Medical School instructor and COVID Symptom Study leader David A. Drew, PhD, will be the featured speaker at the Sept. 15th, 6:30 – 8:30pm Zoom meeting of the Wellesley Rotary Club.

Wellesley Rotary Club speaker — Dr. David A. Drew

Dr. Drew is an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Biobanking for the Clinical & Translational Epidemiology Unit and is an Investigator within the Division of Gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In addition, he is a leading part of the multinational academic-industry collaborative that has launched the COVID Symptom Study, a mobile app designed for individuals to self-report symptom. The Study also collects basic health information as it relates to COVID-19 exposures, which has improved real-time epidemiology methods for combating COVID-19.

Dr. Drew will discuss a range of topics related to research in the time of a global pandemic; the need for real-time epidemiology; the findings from the COVID Symptom Study that are helping researchers combat COVID-19 here and abroad; and how industry-academia relationships can empower rapid deployment of tools for critical data capture during a global health crisis.

When not focusing his research effort on COVID-19, Dr. Drew’s long-term research has broadly focused on precision medicine, centering on the interception and prevention of gastrointestinal disorders, primarily cancers, through chemoprevention, lifestyle modification, or enhanced screening methods. He is a member of and funded by the American Association of Cancer Research and the American Gastroenterological Association. In addition he receives grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders.

Dr. Drew received a B.S. in Biochemistry/Biophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY and later completed
his Doctorate in Biomedical Science at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, CT and post-doctoral training at HMS/MGH and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The Rotary Club of Wellesley is one of Wellesley’s oldest community service groups and conducts local programs to benefit the Town of Wellesley. The public is always invited to any Rotary program. Due to COVID-19, the club is conducting all meetings on Zoom. Please check the web site www.wellesleyrotary.org for times. If you are interested in attending, please send an email to [email protected] for a Zoom Meeting invitation.