Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Pam Ling is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, where she conducts research on tobacco, media, and social marketing to young people. Her work focuses on understanding how tobacco marketing encourages youth and young adults to initiate tobacco use, and counter-engineering these strategies to improve tobacco control programs for young people. This work includes analyses of thousands of previously secret tobacco industry documents detailing marketing strategies targeting young adults. She also leads an NIH funded multicenter trial of counter- marketing interventions to decrease tobacco use among young adults in bars and nightclubs. Dr. Ling has special interest in young adult smoking, understanding tobacco marketing, the global proliferation of U.S. tobacco marketing strategies, marketing to women, smokeless and novel tobacco product marketing, and using market research to guide clinical and public health interventions . Dr. Ling’s clinical work is in general internal medicine as a primary care physician.
Pam Ling is also known for her role as a housemate on MTV’s The Real World, San Francisco in 1994. The show featured Pedro Zamora, a 22 year old AIDS educator whose story established a milestone in AIDS awareness among the general public. Since 1994, Pam has been active in HIV/AIDS education programs and other health programs affecting young people. Dr. Ling received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard/Radcliffe in History and Science, and her MD from the UCSF School of Medicine. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital Primary Care program with an emphasis on young people and AIDS clinical care. She received her Masters degree in Public Health from UC Berkeley.
