Renee Nicole Salas

Overview

Renee N. Salas, MD, MPH, MS is Affiliated Faculty and previous Burke Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute and a Yerby Fellow at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also a practicing emergency medicine physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Salas has served as the lead author of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change U.S. Brief since 2018 and founded and leads its Working Group of over 70 U.S. organizations, institutions, and centers working at the nexus of climate change and health. Dr. Salas was a Director for the first Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice Symposium and spearheads the broader Initiative in partnership with The New England Journal of Medicine. She was the lead author of the cornerstone Interactive Perspective for The New England Journal of Medicine that launched the Journal’s climate crisis and health topic page.

Dr. Salas was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for her work on climate change and health. She served on the original planning committee for the their Grand Challenge on Health and Climate Change and continues to serve on committees related to this work. She has testified before Congress for the full House Committee on Oversight and Reform on how climate change is harming health. She engages in research on how climate change is impacting the healthcare system and developing evidence-based adaptation. She lectures and serves on committees at the nexus of climate and health nationally and internationally, advises and publishes in high impact journals, and her work and expertise are regularly featured in mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, NPR, Time, and the Associated Press (examples below).

Dr. Salas is the founder and past Chair of the Climate Change and Health Interest Group at the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) and led their first workshop on the topic. She gave the first national presentations on climate change and health at the flagship emergency medicine conferences - SAEM and American College of Emergency Physicians annual meetings. She is also the recipient of the Clinician-Teacher Development Award from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shore Fellowship from Harvard Medical School.

Her Doctor of Medicine is from the innovative five-year medical school program to train physician-investigators at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine with a Master of Science in Clinical Research from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, which later awarded her the Early Career Leadership Award for her outstanding career achievements. Her Master of Public Health is from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with a concentration in environmental health. Dr. Salas received her undergraduate degree from Saint Mary’s College, which later recognized her as a prestigious Shannon Scholar for exceptional alumna.