Ruth M. Dufresne, S.M.

Ruth Dufresne, SM, is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Excellence in Public Health and the Center for Excellence in Aging and Health. Current projects include AgingME and the Legacy Scholars Program. AgingME is Maine’s Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program to create a more age-capable workforce in healthcare and long-term care services and supports with a focus on rural and tribal communities. The Legacy Scholars Program invites adults, aged 55 years and older, to join with UNE faculty, professional staff, and students in shared scholarship on healthful aging. 

Ruth has extensive experience as an evaluator on state and federally funded programs in public health and primary care settings. She collaborates with community partners to integrate or improve care in primary care and health systems. Ruth’s area of expertise is chronic disease prevention and management program research and evaluation. She provides both quantitative and qualitative evaluation expertise, designs and implements comprehensive evaluations, develops data collection tools such as web-based surveys and interview discussion guides, analyzes and summarizes data, and disseminates findings to funders and partners. 

Prior to coming to UNE in 2010, Ruth was the president of her public health consulting practice for twelve years, providing evaluation consultation to the Maine Center for Public Health as the lead evaluator for the Cardiovascular Health Program and Diabetes Prevention and Control Program. From 2005 to 2010, she consulted for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, providing evaluation and strategic planning consultation where she developed, in collaboration with the Program, a grant application that was successfully funded, and facilitated and was the lead writer of the five-year strategic plan for cardiovascular health in Maine. From 1998 to 2005 she consulted for the University of Southern Maine, Muskie School of Public Service, Maine Nutrition Network where she developed and implemented the evaluation of the healthy eating peer support initiative with Maine’s Tribal Nations and developed telephone and mail survey instruments to evaluate projects. 

Prior to working as a consultant, Ruth worked for the Maine Bureau of Health (now called Maine CDC) as the Epidemiologist/Program Evaluator for the Breast and Cervical Health Program. Along with other public health positions prior to 1998, Ruth served as a Primary Health Care Coordinator in US Peace Corps in Cameroon, Africa.

Ruth was born and raised in Maine. She is a graduate of the University of Maine at Farmington and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.