Russ Fine, PhD, MSPH
ICRC Director and Principal Investigator
Acting Rehabilitation Core Director
SCIB Director and Principal Investigator
Professor of Medicine, UAB School of Medicine
Professor of Health Care Organization and Policy, UAB School of Public
Health
Dr. Russ Fine, an injury epidemiologist/biostatistician
by training, is the founding director and principal investigator
of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Injury
Control Research Center (UAB ICRC). He supervises and directs
the UAB ICRC’s overall operations and has final responsibility
for decisions regarding program, management, fiscal, and
policy-related matters.
Dr. Fine is a graduate of Southern Illinois University,
the University of Missouri Medical Center, and the University
of Oklahoma Medical Center. He has experience in many areas
of public health and injury control, from investigating
commercial and private aviation crash sites for the Federal
Aviation Administration to establishing and directing the
Illinois Department of Public Health’s Statewide
Pediatric Lead Poisoning Program.
Dr. Fine was recruited by UAB’s Department of Rehabilitation
Medicine in late 1974 and he achieved the rank of full
tenured professor in 1983. While with the Department of
Rehabilitation Medicine he served as its director of research
and scientific affairs, director of research for the NIDRR-sponsored
Medical Rehabilitation Research and Training Center in
Spinal Cord Dysfunction, co-director of the UAB Spinal
Cord Injury Care System, and co-director of the National
Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center.
In 1988, Dr. Fine was appointed professor of medicine
in the UAB Department of Medicine’s Division of Clinical
Immunology and Rheumatology. Dr. Fine holds secondary appointments
in the UAB School of Public Health’s Department of
Health Care Organization and Policy and in UAB’s
Graduate School. He is a Fellow of the American College
of Epidemiology and a member of numerous professional organizations,
including the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine,
the World Federation of Neurology, the New York Academy
of Sciences, and the Society of Sigma Chi. Dr. Fine served
as chairman of the late Governor George Wallace’s
Task Force on Drunk Driving for the state of Alabama and
is cofounder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Alabama,
serving as president of that organization in Jefferson
County from 1984 to 1986.
He is the author or coauthor of more than 100 contributions
to scientific literature and has been awarded numerous
funded and peer-reviewed scientific research grants and
contracts that have brought approximately $45 million to
UAB between 1975 and 2005. In 1993, the story of his relationship
with a despondent quadriplegic contemplating suicide was
the subject of The Switch, a widely acclaimed made-for-television
movie that was broadcast nationwide on the CBS television
network.
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