Atul Gawande, MD

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, was born in Brooklyn, New York but spent his childhood in Athens, Ohio. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and political science from Stanford University. As a Rhodes Scholar, he also earned a Master of Arts degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School and earned a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

He completed his general surgery residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he has been a longtime faculty member. Dr. Gawande is currently on leave from BWH to lead Global Health at USAID, the US Agency for International Development. President Joseph Biden appointed Dr. Gawande to this role. He works closely with the Centers for Disease Control on complex problems ranging from disaster relief, conflict zones, food security and health equity.

When choosing where to complete his residency training, Dr. Gawande chose BWH due to a combination of happenstance and draw. At the time, his wife was pregnant and so it would be practical to stay in the general Boston area but also, in meeting Michael Zinner, MD, the Chief of Surgery at the time, Dr. Gawande was given a unique opportunity to both train in Surgery and follow his passion for public policy and health reform. He also fell in love with the operating room and was continually amazed at what people can do with their hands and their minds.

Along with Michael Zinner, MD, some mentors of Dr. Gawande’s were Troy Brennan, MD, Paul Farmer, MD, Jim Kim, MD, Howard Hyatt, MD. Dr. Gawande also cites Mark McClellan, MD, who was in the same internship year as he, who went on to head the FDA, as another example of BWH being fertile training ground for leaders in health policy.

A longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, Dr. Gawande is also a New York Times bestselling author of four books: Complications; A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science; Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance; The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.

He initially began his writing career submitting articles for Slate Magazine, an online periodical that his colleagues created. As his audience began to grow and the opportunity to write for The New Yorker emerged, Dr. Gawande began to tackle more difficult issues in his writing, such as why medical errors occur, the learning curve of being a surgeon and what matters most to patients in the end. Under the watchful eye of Michael Zinner, MD, his writing career flourished. It was the supportive atmosphere, the ability to take chances and the opportunity to train in a top-level program at a top-level hospital and write for a top-level magazine that made the Brigham such a special place for Dr. Gawande.

Dr. Gawande also passionately believes that the spirit of innovation and being surrounded by like-minded physicians whose goal is better patient care and outcomes is part of what makes BWH and Harvard so special. In developing new techniques and running large scale trials, Dr. Gawande was able to form a research team that grew into a health systems innovation center called Ariadne Labs located in Boston. At Ariadne labs, faculty work together, taking on various issues in healthcare from surgery/primary care/end of life care and childbirth and work as a collaborative team and tie their successes together.

Katherine McGowan, MD

For more than forty years, Dr. Katherine “Kay” McGowan, has provided care to the most vulnerable and marginalized patients in the greater Boston area. In the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, she was on the frontline in providing care for those suffering from what was then a terminal illness in her practices at Faulkner (now Brigham and Women’s Faulkner) Hospital and at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. She has continued to be a leading practitioner in the area of HIV/AIDS as it has now become a treatable infectious disease.

Over the course of her career in medicine, she has seen other new and emerging infectious diseases, including COVID-19 and monkeypox, alter the course of the practice of medicine. As COVID-19 emerged in the Boston area in 2019, Dr. McGowan helped to oversee Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital’s response in her role as Chief of the Division of Infectious Disease. In addition to her role as an infectious disease specialist, she also provided primary care for many years in her practice at Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner.

Dr. McGowan graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1975 and completed her internal medicine residency and fellowship at Tufts Medical Center. She is board-certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases.

Over the years, Dr. McGowan has garnered a reputation for being dedicated, conscientious and an exemplary professional. She is known not only as an outstanding clinician but also an outstanding teacher of her colleagues, medical students, residents, and nurse practitioners. When not practicing medicine, she cherishes spending time with family, especially her grandchild.