No. 8: Robert Johnson

Johnson’s impressive resumé starts on line one: he’s the dean of the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, and is the first person to simultaneously lead two medical schools, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Johnson’s also a practicing physician working in Newark, putting him on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patients these days come to ask him if they can and should get a vaccine, and “the answer is an unqualified yes,” he said in an article on Rutgers’ web site about getting vaccinated. “Advanced age also is not a factor.” A septuagenarian himself, Johnson said he had no side effects other than injection site tenderness.

Johnson is also professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. In his research, Johnson focuses on adolescent physical and mental health, adolescent HIV, adolescent violence, adolescent sexuality, health equity and family strengthening.