Brian Custer, PhD, MPH

Biography

Brian Custer is the Director of Epidemiology and Policy Science at Vitalant Research Institute (VRI) San Francisco and Vice President of Research and Scientific Program at Vitalant. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF, and the Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy & Economics (CHOICE) Institute at the University of Washington. He earned his MPH and PhD degrees from the University of Washington in Seattle. He conducts research on a spectrum of transfusion medicine topics in donor and recipient epidemiology, and health economics of blood safety policy, primarily focused on infectious diseases. He is the principal investigator for two parts of the NHLBI-funded REDS-IV-P project: the San Francisco Bay Area hub of the Domestic Program and the Brazil Transfusion Safety Research Program. He is also the principal investigator for two large studies funded by the FDA: the Laboratory and Risk Factor Coordinating Center of the Transfusion-Transmissible Infections Monitoring System (TTIMS) and the HIV Risk Questionnaire (HRQ) Study. He is actively involved in several committees and working groups of AABB, such as Transfusion Transmitted Diseases (TTD), a member of the Transfusion-Transmitted Infectious Diseases Working Party of ISBT, and the lead of the ISBT Transfusion Research Young Investigator Training (I TRY IT). He has served on the US Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability (ACBTSA), and continues to participate in working groups and subcommittees of ACBTSA.