In 1977, Dr. Sokas began her life-long contribution to improve the lives of workers as a U.S. Public Health Service Corp physician working with the Las Marias Migrant Health Center in Puerto Rico where she directed the medical care to 2,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families. Following this experience, she received advanced training as a NIOSH Fellow in Occupational Health at Harvard School of Public Health and Peter Bent Brighham Hospital. Since completing this training, she has worked continuously to protect worker health through a combination of public service, research, teaching and academic medicine. Specifically, Dr. Sokas served as Director of OSHA’s Office of Occupational Medicine where as a strong worker advocate, she provided leadership to the Agency and field and technical support to the larger occupational health community.

Rosemary Sokas MD, MOH. rejoined the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in November, 2008, as Director of the Office of Occupational Medicine in the Directorate of Technical Support and Emergency Management, a position she previously held from 1997 – 1999.

Dr. Sokas received her MD from Boston University School of Medicine, her M.Sc. and M.Occ.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health, and is board certified in occupational medicine and in internal medicine. She currently holds a research professorship at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Prior faculty appointments include the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She has delivered clinical care in at the Las Marias Centro de Salud a Migrantes in Puerto Rico and in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Center in Bronx, NY, and has served as a member of the Board of Directors, Friends of Farmworkers, Inc. and as a member of the Pennsylvania Migrant Health Advisory Board. Her research publications evaluate the impact of occupational exposures on common health outcomes, training intervention effectiveness in health care and in construction, and novel approaches to addressing the needs of immigrant, high-risk, contingent and low-income workers.