Leana S. Wen, MD, MSc, FAAEM, is an emergency physician, patient advocate, and public health leader. On January 15th, 2015. Dr. Wen began serving as the Health Commissioner for Baltimore City in the administration of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. The Baltimore City Health Department is the oldest continuously-operating health department in the United States, formed in 1793.
At BCHD, Dr Wen oversees a department of over 1,100 employees with wide-ranging responsibilities that include management of acute communicable diseases, animal control, chronic disease prevention, emergency preparedness, food service inspections, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STD), maternal-child health, school health, senior services, and youth violence issues.
Most recently, Dr. Wen has been an attending physician and Director of Patient-Centered Care in the Department of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University. A professor of Emergency Medicine at the School of Medicine and of Health Policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, she co-directed GW’s Residency Fellowship in Health Policy, co-led a new national collaboration on health policy and social mission with Kaiser Permanente, and served as founding director of Who’s My Doctor, a campaign calling for radical transparency in medicine.
The author of the critically-acclaimed book
When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests, Dr. Wen has given four popular TED and TEDMED talks on patient-centered care, public health leadership, and healthcare reform.
Read Dr. Wen’s op-ed on why she went from the ER to the head of healthcare in Baltimore.
Dr. Wen received her medical training from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Brigham & Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she was a Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School. A Rhodes Scholar, she studied public health and health policy at the University of Oxford, and worked as a community organizer in Los Angeles and St. Louis.
Follow@DrLeanaWen.
Like BlackAmericaWeb.com on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
