Dr. Pantell worked at the Health Policy Center of the Urban Institute before attending the UC Berkeley - UCSF Joint Medical Program for medical school, where he earned an MD and a Master's in Health and Medical Sciences focusing on social epidemiology. He then completed his residency in pediatrics and was Chief Resident at the University of California, San Francisco. He was also a fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program at the NIH, where his work focused on biomarkers of social adversity.

Currently he is an Assistant Professor at UCSF, where his research is conducted with the UCSF Center for Health and Community, the UCSF Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network, and the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative. Broadly, his research focuses on social determinants of health and social needs. More specifically, his research focuses on implementing social needs screening in clinical settings, the utility of incorporating social information into clinical decision making, addressing social needs in clinical settings, data mining and the analysis of large datasets, and biological manifestations of the social determinants of health.

Clinically, Dr. Pantell works is as a pediatric hospitalist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital - Mission Bay and Washington Hospital in Fremont. He also works as an pediatric urgent care physician and runs the Tattoo Removal Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.