Tuesday, May 8, 2018
8:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.
Hiebert Lounge
72 East Concord Street
Boston
Services for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People Provided
#BUSPHSymposia
Livestreaming Available During Event
The day will bring together public health scholars, journalists, thought leaders, and the wider public health community to discuss how we can view Trump-era policies and their impact on health more than a year into the new administration. The day is very much nonpartisan, and we do not approach this with any preordained answers. We hope that speakers will use the best available data to inform their presentation, or—recognizing that it is still too early for many definitive studies—to ground their comments in the state-of-the-science.
Cosponsored with The Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era
HEALTH OF PARTICULAR POPULATIONS I
HEALTH OF PARTICULAR POPULATIONS II
Agenda
8 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Breakfast and Informal Greetings
8:30 a.m. – 8:40 a.m.
OPENING REMARKS
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
David U. Himmelstein
Distinguished Professor, School of Urban Public Health, Hunter College, City University of New York; Lecturer in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Read More
![HEADSHOT Himmelstein WEB](https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2018/03/HEADSHOT-Himmelstein-WEB.png)
David U. Himmelstein is a distinguished professor of public health at CUNY’s Hunter College and a lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he was previously a professor of medicine. He also serves as a staff physician at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Prior to his move to CUNY, he practiced primary care internal medicine and served as the chief of social and community medicine at a public hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has authored or co-authored three books and more than 150 journal articles, including widely cited proposals for single-payer healthcare reform, and studies of patient dumping (which led to the enactment of an EMTALA law that banned that practice), the high administrative costs of the US healthcare system, medical bankruptcy (co-authored with Senator Elizabeth Warren), and the mortal consequences of uninsurance. He co-founded, with Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, Physicians for a National Health Program, whose 22,000 members advocate for non-profit, single-payer national health insurance. Himmelstein graduated from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed a medical residency at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, and a fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Steffie Woolhandler
Distinguished Professor, Hunter College, City University of New York; Lecturer in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Read More
Steffie Woolhandler is a Distinguished Professor at The City University of New York’s Hunter College, a primary-care doctor in the South Bronx, and a Lecturer in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she was formerly Professor of Medicine. A native of Louisiana, she graduated from LSU Medical School in New Orleans, and completed an internal medicine residency at Cambridge Hospital and a research fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard. During her stint as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) she worked with Senator Paul Wellstone and then-Congressman Bernie Sanders. She has published more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters and books on health policy and is a leading advocate of non-profit national health insurance for the United States She, along with Dr. David Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Among her influential scholarly articles are studies on patient dumping (which led to a federal ban on that practice, medical bankruptcy (co-authored with Elizabeth Warren), waste in hospitals and in medicine more generally , the lethality of being uninsured and proposals for single payer health reform.
@swoolhandler
8:40 a.m. – 9 a.m.
KEYNOTE: FRAMING THE ISSUE—WHY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MAY AFFECT HEALTH
Mary Travis Bassett
Commissioner, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
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Mary Travis Bassett was appointed commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in January 2014. With more than 30 years of experience in public health, Bassett has dedicated her career to advancing health equity. After Bassett completed her medical training, she moved to Harare, Zimbabwe, where she served on the medical faculty at the University of Zimbabwe for 17 years. In that role, she developed a range of AIDS prevention interventions to address one of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics. She later served as the associate director of Health Equity at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Southern Africa Office, overseeing its Africa AIDS portfolio. In 2002, Bassett was appointed deputy commissioner of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she directed key initiatives, including bans on smoking and trans fats in restaurants and the requirement at chain restaurants to post calorie counts. She also established the department’s District Public Health Offices in East and Central Harlem, the South Bronx, and North and Central Brooklyn to lead targeted health and communication strategies in these communities, which experience an excess burden of disease. Each office advances community health through home-visiting programs, free exercise programs, efforts to increase access to healthy food, meetings with area doctors, and coordination with local coalitions. Since 2009, Bassett has served at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation as program director for the African Health Initiative and more recently has led the Child Well-being Program. Both portfolios have focused on strengthening systems to support health improvement. She served for many years as an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health. Bassett grew up in New York City. She received a BA in history and science from Harvard University and an MD from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Bassett served her medical residency at Harlem Hospital Center, and holds a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Washington.
9 a.m. – 10:10 a.m.
PANEL I: HEALTH OF PARTICULAR POPULATIONS – PART ONE
The Health of Immigrants
Altaf Saadi
Fellow, National Clinical Scholars Program, University of California, Los Angeles
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Altaf Saadi is a neurologist and fellow at the National Clinical Scholars Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she focuses on promoting healthcare leadership in health policy, health services, and community-partnered research. Her fellowship is also supported by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. She completed her neurology training at the Partners Neurology Program at Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals in Boston, where she also served as chief resident. During her residency, Saadi’s interest in health equity led her to work in resource-limited settings in Zambia, Tanzania, and the Navajo Nation; with Boston Healthcare for the Homeless; and with the Doctors Without Borders telemedicine program. Currently, she serves as a volunteer member of the Physicians for Human Rights’ Asylum Network, providing medical and psychological forensic evaluations for asylum seekers. Her research and advocacy focus on health inequities and disparities among racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and refugees, and enhancing diversity within the medical workforce. Most recently, her work has focused on understanding how hospitals and healthcare facilities can ensure that all patients feel safe when accessing health care regardless of their immigration status, including publishing a recent viewpoint in JAMA entitled, “Making the Case for Sanctuary Hospitals.” She is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Medical School, where she graduated cum laude and received the Dean’s Community Service Award.
@AltafSaadiMD
The Health of Minority Populations
Zinzi Bailey
Assistant Scientist, Jay Weiss Institute for Health Equity, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami
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Zinzi Bailey is a social epidemiologist focused on cancer health disparities as well as the health impacts of and policy solutions for structural and institutional discrimination, especially at the intersection of public health and criminal justice. She is also interested in the use of data and indicators in equitable policy and management. Bailey is currently an assistant scientist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Jay Weiss Institute for Health Equity at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. She was the director of research and evaluation at the Center for Health Equity in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from 2015 to 2017. Bailey received a DSc in social and behavioral sciences from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an MSPH with a concentration in global epidemiology from Emory University.
@zinzinator
The Health of Children
Davida Schiff
Medical Director, HOPE Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital
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Davida Schiff is a general academic pediatrician and health services researcher focused on understanding how substance use in pregnant and parenting women impacts the health of children and families. She is the medical director of the HOPE Clinic (Harnessing support for Opioid use in Pregnancy and Early childhood) at Massachusetts General Hospital, a multidisciplinary program in caring for women and families from the time of conception through the first two years postpartum. Her scholarship has focused on understanding the stigma toward pregnant and parenting women with opioid use disorder, creating and implementing a specialized curriculum for trainees caring for substance-exposed dyads, assessing the impact of hospital and professional guidelines around supporting breastfeeding in mothers with OUD, and evaluating a novel police-led addiction treatment referral program in Gloucester, MA. Her work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Pediatrics, JAMA Pediatrics, Academic Pediatrics, Journal of Substance Abuse and Treatment, and Substance Abuse, among other journals. She is an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Schiff completed her undergraduate training at Columbia University, medical training at the Boston University School of Medicine, pediatrics residency in the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital, general pediatrics research fellowship at Boston Medical Center, and master’s program in health services research from the Boston University School of Public Health.
@davida_schiff
Moderator
Charles Kravetz
General Manager, WBUR
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Charles Kravetz is the general manager of WBUR, the NPR radio station licensed to Boston University. Widely regarded as one of the leading NPR stations in America, WBUR originates four nationally distributed programs: Car Talk, On Point, Here & Now, and Only A Game. It has been honored countless times, most recently winning the Edward R. Murrow Award for the best radio station in America. Before WBUR, Kravetz was the president and general manager of New England Cable News, where he oversaw the largest regional news channel in America, reaching 3.7 million homes in all six New England states. As vice president of news and station manager, Kravetz also oversaw the creation and growth of the network’s newsroom into one of the most distinguished and honored television news organizations in the United States. NECN is the only regional cable news channel ever to win the George Foster Peabody Award and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Broadcast Journalism Award, the highest honors in the television news industry. Before launching NECN, Kravetz spent 12 years at WCVB-TV. While there, he held several positions, including assistant news director; senior executive producer of new programming; original producer and later executive producer of Chronicle, WCVB’s award-winning nightly magazine program; and associate producer and later producer of Calendar, an Emmy-winning monthly newsmagazine. A native of Sharon, Massachusetts, Kravetz graduated magna cum laude from the University of Rochester and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He studied theater in the graduate program at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Kravetz lives in the suburbs west of Boston with his wife, Deborah Sinay. They have two daughters.
10:10 a.m. – 11:20 a.m.
PANEL II: HEALTH AND BEHAVIOR
The Economy, and Its Impact on Health
Atheendar S. Venkataramani
Assistant Professor, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
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Atheendar S. Venkataramani is an assistant professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and a staff physician at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Venkataramani is a health economist who studies the life-course origins of health and socioeconomic inequality. His current research focuses on elucidating the effects of early life interventions on adult health and well-being; understanding the relationship between economic opportunities and health behaviors and outcomes; and examining the spillover health impacts of social policies. This work spans both domestic and international settings, and is currently funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Venkataramani completed an MD at Washington University, a PhD in health policy (economics) at Yale University, and a BS in biology and economics at Duke University. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine–Global Primary Care at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Trump Policies on Food and Nutrition
Marion Nestle
Paulette Goddard Professor and Professor Emerita, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University
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Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University in the department she chaired from 1988 to 2003. She is also a professor of sociology at NYU and a visiting professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. Previous positions were at Brandeis University and the UCSF School of Medicine, where she was associate dean. Prior to joining NYU, Nestle was senior nutrition policy advisor in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Department of Health and Human Services. Her research examines the scientific and societal influences on dietary choices and their health consequences. She is the author of several prize-winning books, among them Food Politics, Safe Food, Why Calories Count, and Soda Politics. Nestle’s next book is Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat (Basic Books, October 2018). Her work has received many awards, including honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky and the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors Program. From 2008 to 2013, she wrote a monthly “Food Matters” column for the San Francisco Chronicle. She blogs almost daily at www.foodpolitics.com, and her twitter account has been ranked by Science Magazine, Time magazine, and The Guardian as among the top ten in health and science. She earned a doctorate in molecular biology and an MPH in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley.
@marionnestle
Health Care
Adam Gaffney
Instructor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Pulmonary and Critical Care Physician, Cambridge Health Alliance
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Adam Gaffney is a physician, writer, healthcare researcher, and advocate. He is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance. Gaffney has authored or co-authored articles in numerous medical journals, including the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the American Journal of Public Health, and his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, USA Today, and elsewhere. He is the author of the recent book, To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History (Routledge, 2017). Gaffney is president-elect of the single-payer advocacy organization Physicians for a National Health Program.
@awgaffney
Moderator
Richard L. Berke
Founding Executive Editor, STAT
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Richard L. Berke is the founding executive editor of STAT, a Boston-based national publication that covers health, medicine, and the life sciences. He was previously a longtime reporter and editor at The New York Times, where he served as White House correspondent, chief political correspondent, Washington editor, national editor, video content editor, and assistant managing editor. More recently, Berke was executive editor at Politico. He was a visiting lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and has been a longtime member of the senior advisory committee at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Berke has been a regular on television, with frequent appearances on programs ranging from Washington Week to The Today Show to Charlie Rose. He holds a BA in political science from the University of Michigan and an MS in journalism from Columbia University.
@rickberke
11:20 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Break
11:30 a.m. – 12:40 p.m.
PANEL III: THE WORLD AROUND US
Global Health
Joia Mukherjee
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Chief Medical Officer, Partners In Health
Read More
Joia Mukherjee is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and chief medical officer of Partners In Health, an international medical charity dedicated to providing a preferential option for the poor in health care. She is an internist, a pediatrician, an infectious disease doctor, and a public health specialist. Mukherjee has been the chief medical officer of PIH since 2000, supporting its efforts to provide high-quality, comprehensive health care to the poorest and most vulnerable in partnership with local communities and health officials in Haiti, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Peru, Mexico, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Navajo Nation. Mukherjee’s clinical foci include HIV, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, mental health, Ebola, human resources for health, and health systems strengthening. As an innovator, teacher, and mentor, she has been involved in leveraging the clinical implementation experience of Partners In Health to develop the field of Global Health Delivery at Harvard Medical School. She teaches healthcare professionals and emerging leaders in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she directs the Masters of Medical Science program in Global Health Delivery. She also teaches Global Health Delivery, social medicine, infectious disease, and human rights to medical students, residents, and fellows at a wide variety of US and international institutions. Her scholarly work is focused on generating a body of evidence to inform the development of healthcare delivery systems that can effectively address the burden of disease in resource-poor settings. Mukherjee serves on the board of directors of Village Health Works (Burundi), the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, and Project Muso (Mali). She advises many other organizations in their efforts to deliver health care with a human rights approach to the poorest of the poor.
@JoiaMukherjee
The Environment
Martin McKee
Professor, European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
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Martin McKee is a professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he founded the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. He is also research director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and past president of the European Public Health Association. McKee has published more than 970 academic papers and 44 books. His contributions to European health policy have been recognized by, among others, election to the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine and by the award of honorary doctorates from Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden and visiting professorships at universities in Europe and Asia. He was awarded the 2003 Andrija Stampar Medal for contributions to European public health, the 2014 Alwyn Smith Prize for outstanding contributions to the health of the population, and the 2015 Donabedian International Award for contributions to quality of care. In 2005, McKee was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. McKee qualified in medicine in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with subsequent training in internal medicine and public health. He has an active following on Twitter.
@martinmckee
Racism and Mental Health
Assistant Professor, Global Health, Boston University School of Public Health
Moderator
Carol Hills
Senior Producer, Reporter, and Host, PRI’s The World
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Carol Hills is a Senior Producer, reporter, and host for PRI’s The World, public radio’s flagship international news show based at WGBH and co-produced with the BBC World Service. She helped launch the program in 1996 and was one of its founding editors. Over the years her reporting has taken her to Europe, India, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Cuba. Hills’ journalistic interests range from foreign policy, global politics, public health, and immigration, to popular culture. Her current priority is to produce news stories that reach across as many political bubbles and silos as possible using a wide array of broadcast and digital platforms. Hills is also intent on challenging the received wisdom of her own silo: public radio and its online journalistic equivalents. In recent years she has introduced global satire as a serious subject of coverage on PRI’s The World. Her reporting on political cartoonists, standup comics, and graffiti artists from Moscow to Mogadishu have shown that suppression of satire is often the first sign that a government is moving in an authoritarian direction. Hills holds a BA in history from the University of Vermont and a MA in international relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In 2001-2002 she was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Her previous positions include creating a CPB award-winning weekday public radio news program for the Northwest and producing radio and television news for The Christian Science Monitor. Hills got her start in journalism at WGBH on The Ten O’Clock News with Christopher Lydon.
@globalcartoons
12:40 p.m. – 1:10 p.m.
Lunch
1:10 p.m. – 2:20 p.m.
PANEL IV: HEALTH OF PARTICULAR POPULATIONS – PART TWO
Native American Health
Michael E. Bird
National Consultant on Native American/Alaska Native Communities, AARP
Read More
Michael E. Bird is a Santo Domingo/Kewa Pueblo Indian from New Mexico. Bird has more than 30 years of public health experience with Native American populations in the areas of medical social work, substance abuse prevention, health promotion and disease prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, behavioral health, and healthcare administration. He is currently a national consultant to AARP on Native American/Alaska Native communities. From 2005 to 2007, he served as the director of Region 6 for Native Americans with ValueOptions-New Mexico, a national for-profit behavioral health company. He is past executive director of the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center, and worked with the Indian Health Services, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, for 20 years. Bird is the first American Indian and social worker to serve as president (2000–2001) of the American Public Health Association in the organization’s history. He is also past president of the New Mexico Public Health Association, and was a fellow in the USPHS Primary Care Policy Fellowship Program. Bird has served on the boards of the Kewa Pueblo Health Corporation, American Indian Graduate Center, Bernalillo County Off Reservation Native American Commission, Health Action New Mexico, Seva Foundation, National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health Advisory Committee (Canada), and AARP National Policy Council. He earned an MSW from the University of Utah and an MSPH at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2009, Bird was recognized as Alumnus of the Year by the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, and in 2018 he was honored as one of the School of Public Health’s most influential public health alumni in its 75-year history.
The Health Crisis in Puerto Rico
Olveen Carrasquillo
Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami
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Olveen Carrasquillo is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. He is a Puerto Rican born physician who was raised in the Bronx. Prior to the University of Miami, Carrasquillo was director of the Center of Excellence in Health Disparities Research at Columbia University. For the last seven years, he has been the chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and now also the chief of Geriatrics and Palliative Care. He oversees a clinical, teaching, and research enterprise of 64 full-time faculty, including six primary care practices and an additional ambulatory hospital based clinic at Jackson Health System (Miami Public Hospital system). Carrasquillo is a national expert on minority health, health disparities, community-based participatory research, access to care, and community health worker interventions. He has more than 20 years of experience leading large NIH Center grants and randomized trials, totaling over $40 million in funding. Carrasquillo’s work includes research in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, HIV, cancer, and most recently in precision medicine. His research has been published in many of the nation’s top medical journals, and he serves on numerous NIH grant review committees. He is also active in various national organizations, including numerous current and past leadership roles in the Society of General Internal Medicine, Physicians for a National Health Program, the National Hispanic Medical Association, and Latinos for National Health Insurance. In Miami, he is a board member of the Miami-Dade Area Health Education Center and the South Florida Health Council. Carrasquillo is often called upon by the media to discuss his research as well as healthcare topics of particular relevance to the Hispanic community, including being a frequent guest on most of the major Latino television networks. Carrasquillo graduated summa cum laude from the Sophie Davis School of Bio-Medical Education at City College, and earned an MD at the New York University School of Medicine. He completed a three-year internal medicine residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Harvard’s two-year General Medicine Fellowship, and an MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Criminal Justice and Incarceration
Lello Tesema
Director of Population Health, Los Angeles County Correctional Health Services, Department of Health Services; Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Southern California; Gehr Fellow, Gehr Family Center for Implementation ScienceRead More
Lello Tesema is a general internal medicine physician. She is the director of Population Health for the Los Angeles County Correctional Health Services in the Department of Health Services; assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Southern California, and a Gehr Fellow at the Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science. Tesema’s research and policy interests include examining the health effects of incarceration and implementing interventions that promote successful diversion and reentry. She completed her medical school training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, her residency at Cambridge Health Alliance, and her Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles.
@LTesema
Moderator
Jenifer McKim
Senior Investigative Reporter and Senior Trainer, New England Center for Investigative Reporting, Boston University College of Communication
Read More
Jenifer McKim is a senior investigative reporter and senior trainer at New England Center for Investigative Reporting, who focuses on social issues. Her stories on child fatalities and the state’s Department of Children and Families were awarded 2016 and 2014 Publick Occurrences awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association and a 2016 Freedom of Information Award from the New England First Amendment Coalition. She was awarded a 2015 Publick Occurrences award for her stories on homeowner debt following the Great Recession. Before joining NECIR in September 2013, McKim worked as a social issues and business reporter at The Boston Globe, where she started in 2008. There, she received a national 2011 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for a story on domestic sex trafficking of minors and a second-place 2013 Casey Medal nod for an investigation into a global child pornography network. McKim was a staff writer at the Orange County Register in California for 10 years, where she led a group of reporters to write about lead-tainted imported Mexican candies. The six-part series was a nominated finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. McKim is a 2008 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and a graduate of Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She started her journalism career at the San Juan Star in Puerto Rico and speaks fluent Spanish.
2:20 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
CLOSING REMARKS
David U. Himmelstein
Distinguished Professor, School of Urban Public Health, Hunter College, City University of New York; Lecturer in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Read More
![HEADSHOT Himmelstein WEB](https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2018/03/HEADSHOT-Himmelstein-WEB.png)
David U. Himmelstein is a distinguished professor of public health at CUNY’s Hunter College and a lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he was previously a professor of medicine. He also serves as a staff physician at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Prior to his move to CUNY, he practiced primary care internal medicine and served as the chief of social and community medicine at a public hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has authored or co-authored three books and more than 150 journal articles, including widely cited proposals for single-payer healthcare reform, and studies of patient dumping (which led to the enactment of an EMTALA law that banned that practice), the high administrative costs of the US healthcare system, medical bankruptcy (co-authored with Senator Elizabeth Warren), and the mortal consequences of uninsurance. He co-founded, with Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, Physicians for a National Health Program, whose 22,000 members advocate for non-profit, single-payer national health insurance. Himmelstein graduated from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed a medical residency at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, and a fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Steffie Woolhandler
Distinguished Professor, Hunter College, City University of New York; Lecturer in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Read More
Steffie Woolhandler is a Distinguished Professor at The City University of New York’s Hunter College, a primary-care doctor in the South Bronx, and a Lecturer in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she was formerly Professor of Medicine. A native of Louisiana, she graduated from LSU Medical School in New Orleans, and completed an internal medicine residency at Cambridge Hospital and a research fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard. During her stint as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) she worked with Senator Paul Wellstone and then-Congressman Bernie Sanders. She has published more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters and books on health policy and is a leading advocate of non-profit national health insurance for the United States She, along with Dr. David Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Among her influential scholarly articles are studies on patient dumping (which led to a federal ban on that practice, medical bankruptcy (co-authored with Elizabeth Warren), waste in hospitals and in medicine more generally , the lethality of being uninsured and proposals for single payer health reform.
@swoolhandler