Jim Bristow MD
Dr Jim Bristow is co-coordinator of the Vashon Medical Reserve Corps. He retired to Vashon after a 35-year career as a physician & scientist at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). For the decade prior to retirement, he also served as Deputy Director of the Joint Genome Institute, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) genome sequencing and analysis facility, where he led a program to make the institute’s capabilities available to scientists worldwide.
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bristow recognized the threat to Vashon’s aging population and led a highly successful pandemic response program that included COVID-19 testing, counseling, contact tracing, vaccination, and public communication. The Vashon MRC effort led to the lowest COVID-19 case rate and the highest COVID vaccination rate in King County through 2021.
Vashon MRC continues to collaborate each fall with the Vashon Pharmacy to vaccinate the island’s population against respiratory pathogens. The island’s vaccination rate remains substantially above that predicted from its demographics. The Vashon MRC, Vashon Pharmacy partnership serves as a model rural vaccination program that can be replicated elsewhere.
Bristow is a graduate of Macalester College and Harvard Medical School. He completed residencies at UCSF and Cardinal Glennon Hospital, followed by fellowships at Washington University (Metabolism) and UCSF (Pediatric Cardiology). He is the author of more than 100 scientific publications that are collectively cited more than 500 times annually.
