College of Nursing Faculty

Pamela H. Williams, JD, Ph.D., RN
Assistant Professor

Medical University of South Carolina
College of Nursing
99 Jonathan Lucas Street
MSC 160
Charleston, SC 29425-1600

Telephone: (843) 792-9902
Fax: (843) 792-1741
wilpame@musc.edu

Dr. Williams in as assistant professor at the College of Nursing. She has a BA in Political Science, a Juris Doctorate, and Masters Degree in Nursing all from the University of Oklahoma. She completed her PhD in Nursing and graduate certificate in Public Health Genetics at the University of Washington in Seattle. She conducted postdoctoral study at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her research training includes: NIH NINR T32 awards for predoctoral and postdoctoral research training, a NINR Summer Genetics Institute fellowship at NIH and was a selected scholar to attend the 2010 Health Equity Leadership Institute at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dr. Williams serves at MUSC on the Institute of Human Values research ethics committee. Her current teaching assignments include research ethics, measurement and policy coursework at the graduate level.

Her research interest is in the ethical, legal and health equity implications in healthcare, particularly in the emerging genomics based personalized medicine agenda. Dr. Williams is developing a program of research that focuses on perspectives of populations living with rare genetic diseases in the current era of personalized genomic healthcare and genetic patient advocacy. She has worked and is working with populations with Huntington’s disease, Ataxias, Alpha-One and other genetic conditions. Her interest in rare diseases and the hope generated by genomic healthcare research initially was sparked while working with genetic biobank samples/issues/research at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Since then, she has developed research experience using survey and scale development methods in populations living with rare genetic conditions.