Atul Gawande

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Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande (left) with Jack Cochran, Executive Director of Kaiser Permanente.
Born (1965-11-05) November 5, 1965
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Residence United States
Nationality American
Fields Journalist and surgeon
Alma mater Stanford University (B.S.)
Balliol College, Oxford (M.A.)
Harvard Medical School (M.D.)
Harvard School of Public Health (M.P.H.)

Atul Gawande (born on November 5, 1965 in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is an American surgeon and journalist. He is widely known as an expert on optimizing modern healthcare systems. He serves as a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and associate director of their Center for Surgery and Public Health. He is also an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He has written extensively on medicine and public health for The New Yorker and Slate[1] and is the author of the books Complications, Better, and The Checklist Manifesto.

Early years

Gawande was born in Brooklyn, New York to Indian Maharashtrian immigrants to the United States, both doctors. The family soon moved to Athens, Ohio, where he and his sister grew up. He obtained an undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1987, was a Rhodes scholar (earning a degree in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from Balliol College, Oxford in 1989), and later graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1995. He also has a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health (earned 1999).

Political career and medical school

As a student Gawande was a volunteer for Gary Hart's campaign. As a Rhodes Scholar, he spent one year at Oxford University. After graduation, he joined Al Gore's 1988 presidential campaign. He worked as a health-care researcher for Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN), who was author of a "managed competition" health care proposal for the Conservative Democratic Forum. After two years he left medical school to become Bill Clinton's health care lieutenant during the 1992 campaign and became a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services after Clinton's inauguration. He directed one of the three committees of the Clinton Health Care Task Force, supervising 75 people and defined the benefits packages for Americans and subsidies and requirements for employers. He returned to medical school in 1993 and earned his M.D in 1994.[2]

Journalism

Soon after he began his residency, his friend Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate, asked him to contribute to the online magazine. His pieces on the life of a surgical resident caught the eye of the New Yorker which published several pieces by him before making him a staff writer in 1998.

A June 2009 New Yorker essay by Gawande[3] compared the health care of two towns in Texas to show why health care was more expensive in one town compared to the other. Using the town of McAllen, Texas as an example, it argued that a revenue-maximizing businessman-like culture (which can provide substantial amounts of unnecessary care) was an important factor in driving up costs, unlike a culture of low-cost high-quality care as provided by the Mayo Clinic and other efficient health systems.

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post called it "the best article you'll see this year on American health care—why it's so expensive, why it's so poor, [and] what can be done."[4] The article was cited by President Barack Obama during Obama's attempt to get health care reform legislation passed by the United States Congress. The article "made waves"[5] and according to Senator Ron Wyden, the article "affected [Obama's] thinking dramatically", and was shown to a group of senators by Obama, who said, "This is what we’ve got to fix."[6] After reading the New Yorker article, Warren Buffett's long-time business partner Charlie Munger mailed a check to Gawande in the amount of $20,000 as a thank you to Dr. Gawande for providing something so socially useful.[7] Gawande donated the $20,000 to the Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Surgery and Public Health.[8]

In addition to his popular writing, Gawande has published studies on topics including military surgery techniques and error in medicine, included in the New England Journal of Medicine. He is also the director of the World Health Organization's Global Patient Safety Challenge. His essays have appeared in The Best American Essays 2003, The Best American Science Writing 2002, and The Best American Science Writing 2009.[1]

Books

Gawande published his first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, in 2002. It was a National Book Award finalist, and has been published in over one hundred countries.[9]

His second book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, was released in April 2007. It discusses three virtues that Gawande considers to be most important for success in medicine: diligence, doing right, and ingenuity. Gawande offers examples in the book of people who have embodied these virtues. The book strives to present multiple sides of contentious medical issues, such as malpractice law in the US, physicians' role in capital punishment, and treatment variation between hospitals.[10]

Gawande released his third book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, in 2009. It discusses the importance of organization and pre-planning (such as thorough checklists) in both medicine and the larger world. The Checklist Manifesto reached the New York Times Hardcover nonfiction bestseller list in 2010.[11]

Awards and recognition

In 2006 Gawande was named a MacArthur fellow for his work investigating and articulating modern surgical practices and medical ethics.[12][13] In 2007 he became director of the World Health Organization's effort to reduce surgical deaths,[14] and in 2009 he was elected a Hastings Center Fellow.[15]

He was named one of the 20 Most Influential South Asians by Newsweek in 2004.[16] In the 2010 Time 100 he was included (fifth place) in Thinkers Category.[17] Also in 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.[18]

In the medical field, he is an expert on the removal of cancerous endocrine glands.[citation needed]

Personal life

Gawande lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife, Kathleen Hobson, and their three children (Walker, Hattie and Hunter).[19]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Atul Gawande: Contributors: The New Yorker
  2. ↑ Former Policymaker Opts for Hands-On Health Care - International Herald Tribune
  3. ↑ Atul Gawande (June 1, 2009). "The Cost Conundrum – What a Texas town can teach us about health care". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on June 10, 2011. Retrieved June 29, 2011. 
  4. ↑ Ezra Klein (May 27, 2009). "Atul Gawande on American Health Care" The Washington Post Accessed August 3, 2011.
  5. ↑ Bryant Furlow (October 2009). "US reimbursement systems encourage fraud and overutilisation". The Lancet Oncology 10 (10): 937–938. doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(09)70297-9. PMID 19810157. 
  6. ↑ Health Care Spending Disparities Stir a Fight, Robert Pear, The New York Times, June 8, 2009
  7. ↑ Lauren Hatch (March 2, 2010). "New Yorker Writer Gets $20,000 Check From Warren Buffett's Partner". Business Insider. Retrieved May 27, 2012. 
  8. ↑ Shea, Danny (March 1, 2010). "Atul Gawande, New Yorker Writer: I Didn't Accept Warren Buffett's Partner's $20,000 Check". Huffington Post. 
  9. ↑ Gawande, Atul. "About Atul Gawande". Retrieved May 31, 2011. 
  10. ↑ Name (required) (April 15, 2010). "Book Review – Better: A surgeon’s notes on performance « The Beaver Medic". Beavermedic.wordpress.com. Retrieved May 27, 2012. 
  11. ↑ [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/books/bestseller/besthardnonfiction.html?ref=bestseller, accessed March 4, 2010.]
  12. ↑ {8F16CDA4-A6FF-41A8-AE1B-A0EF9E968CE3}&notoc=1 MacArthur Fellows 2006. Atul Gawande
  13. ↑ "Atul Gawande Named MacArthur Fellow". Press release by Brigham and Women's Hospital. September 19, 2006. Retrieved February 25, 2010. 
  14. ↑ "Q&A with Atul Gawande, Part 2" H&HN. June 30, 2011. Retrieved July 7, 2011.
  15. ↑ The Hastings Center Elects Eight New Fellows
  16. ↑ "Power and Influence". Newsweek. March 22, 2004. Retrieved February 3, 2010. 
  17. ↑ "The 2010 Time 100: Atul Gawande". April 29, 2010. 
  18. ↑ "Foreign Policy Magazine"
  19. ↑ "Atul Gawande: surgeon, health policy scholar, and writer". Harvard Magazine. Sep-Oct 2009. 

External links

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