Meet the 2008 Scholars

Dr. David Law
Director of Research
Division of Research (PPA)
Tennessee Department of Public Health

Dr. Law is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the Director of Research in the Office of Policy, Planning and Assessment in the Tennessee Department of Health.  He has worked in the Department of Health since 1999 and is most proud of his role in establishing the Tennessee Birth Defects Registry. He is currently co-chair of the National Birth Defects Prevention Network State Data Committee and the recent recipient of a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the establishment of the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) in Tennessee.

In his research career Dr. Law worked at the UC San Francisco Medical Center, where he was involved in studies of the effects of neurotoxic exposures and the development of traditional and computerized neuropsychological assessment batteries. At the Department of Health, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention supported his efforts to create a statistical model of risk for adolescent substance abuse, which was then used the to create risk profiles for each of Tennessee’s 95 counties. He has also conducted studies of human learning, memory, and performance in complex tasks with support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research.