Patient Safety Expert and Award-Winning Author Atul Gawande Named Commencement Speaker

Atul Gawande, associate professor, surgeon, and celebrated author, has accepted an invitation to be the HSPH Commencement speaker on June 4, 2009, Dean Julio Frenk announced in an e-mail to the School on February 5.

Dr. Gawande is internationally recognized for his research at the intersection of surgery and public health, wrote Dean Frenk.

Dr. Gawande is a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his MPH from HSPH in 1999 and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and an Associate Professor of Surgery at HMS. His research has concentrated on strategies to improve medical performance and public health. He became director of the World Health Organization's global campaign to reduce surgical deaths in 2007.

Dr. Gawande served as a senior health policy advisor in the Clinton presidential campaign and White House from 1992 to 1993. He has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine since 1998. In 2006, Dr. Gawande received a MacArthur Award for his research and writing.

His nonfiction writing has been selected to appear in the annual Best American Essays collection three times and in Best American Science Writing seven of the last eight years. His book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002 and has been published in more than twenty languages. His most recent book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, was a New York Times bestseller and was selected as one of the ten best books of 2007 by Amazon.com and the Sunday Times of London.

-- Photo by Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office