Leana Wen

Leana Wen
Nationality	American
Education	MD, MSc
Alma mater	California State University, Los Angeles Washington University Merton College, Oxford Harvard Medical School
Occupation	Physician, public health leader, writer
Notable work	When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests

Dr. Leana Sheryle Wen is a physician, writer, and public health professor. She is a frequent keynote speaker at medical conferences and is author of the book When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests. In January 2015, Dr. Wen was selected by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to serve as the Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City, where she oversees an agency of 1,100 employees with wide-ranging responsibilities including management of acute communicable diseases, animal control, chronic disease prevention, emergency preparedness, food service inspections, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, maternal-child health, school health, senior services, and youth violence issues.^[1][2]

Prior to her service to Baltimore City, she practiced as an emergency physician at George Washington University, where she served as an professor in the School of Medicine & Health Sciences and professor in health policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health.^[3] Previously, she was an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.^[4] She also served as the National President of the American Medical Student Association and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine/Resident and Student Association.^[5]

Selected as the winner of Nicholas Kristof's Win-A-Trip contest,^[6] she wrote for The New York Times on health and conflict.^[7] She was selected by the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services to serve on the Council on Graduate Medical Education to advise the U.S. Congress on medical education and health workforce planning.^[8] A regular blogger for National Public Radio, Huffington Post and Psychology Today, she is a noted patient advocate and public health expert. She is also a frequent keynote speaker on healthcare reform, education, and leadership, and TED speaker.^{[9][10][11][12]}

Education and training

Wen was born and raised in Shanghai, China. Five years after immigrating to the U.S. not speaking any English, she entered California State University, Los Angeles, at age 13, and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry at age 18.^[13] She received multiple undergraduate awards and had the choice of eight fully funded medical school scholarships.^[14] Wen matriculated at Washington University School of Medicine where she became a noted activist and student leader. In 2005, she was elected the first ever Asian-American National President of the American Medical Student Association by its 65,000 members, and led the organization to reform medical education and expand its PharmFree campaign.^[15][16] Under her leadership, AMSA helped introduce three pieces of legislation in the 107th Congress and founded the Medical Student Disaster Relief Program in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Wen trained as a resident physician in Emergency Medicine at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency.^[17] She was a clinical fellow and faculty at Harvard Medical School and practiced emergency medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.^[18] She was one of the doctors who took care of the 2013 Boston marathon victims in the Mass General ER.^[19]

Awards

Wen's leadership awards include the Davis-Putter Award for Peace and Justice, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Institutes of Health Fogarty, National Security Education Program, and Global Health Fellowship.^[20] At 25, she became the youngest recipient of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi lifetime achievement award.

In 2007, Wen was selected as one of 32 U.S. Rhodes Scholars.^[21] At the University of Oxford, Wen read for the MSc in Economic and Social History and MSc in Modern Chinese Studies.^[22]

International engagement and leadership

As part of Win-a-Trip with Nicholas Kristof, Wen wrote a blog for The New York Times.^[23] Her travels with Kristof are featured in the HBO movie Reporter.^[24]

In 2005, Dr. Wen was asked by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to serve on the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) to advise the U.S. Congress on workforce planning and medical education issues. She was instrumental in writing the Eighteenth Report of COGME that called for the establishment of the U.S. Public Health Medical Schools, a new form of medical education that emphasizes primary and community health, that integrates public health and medical education, and provides free education in exchange for service.^[25] This is a concept she had first championed during her tenure as the National President of the American Medical Student Association.^[26]

Dr. Wen has been a Global Health Fellow with the World Health Organization and conducted research on emergency care systems in nearly a dozen countries. She also served as a consultant to the Brookings Institution and China Medical Board and led major international public health reforms.^[13]

Patient advocacy

Inspired by her experiences as a patient and as a caregiver to her mother, who died of cancer, Dr. Wen began writing a blog, The Doctor is Listening.^[27] She has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Psychology Today on patient empowerment and healthcare reform.^[28][29] She is an advisor to the newly established Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute,^[30] and is an advisor to the Lown Institute and the Medical Education Futures Study.^[31] She is the founder of a Who's My Doctor, an international campaign that calls for transparency in medicine.^[32]

In 2013, St. Martin’s Press published her book, When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests. It is about how patients can take control of their health to advocate for better care for themselves.^[33][34]

Dr. Wen has given talks throughout the U.S. and internationally on public health, patient advocacy, healthcare reform, education, and leadership, including several TED talks.^[11][35][36] She has been featured on CNN, NPR, Fox News, and MSNBC.^{[37][38][39] [40]}

See also

• Rhodes Scholarship
• American Medical Student Association
• Baltimore
• Nicholas Kristof
• Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

References

External links

• Official website
• Template:Baltimore City Health Department