Dr. Leana Wen

Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician at Brigham & Women's/Massachusetts General Hospital, clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School, and a former Rhodes Scholar. Inspired by her own childhood illness and then her mother's long battle with cancer, Dr. Wen is passionate about guiding patients to advocate for better care. She has been featured in TIME, Newsweek, ABC News, NPR, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and the award-winning HBO documentary Reporter. Dr. Wen speaks regularly across the U.S. and in Europe, Asia, and Africa to on simple yet effective ways for patients to take control of their health and her critcally-acclaimed book: When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests. Follow @DrLeanaWen.

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Dr. Leana Wen an emergency physician at Brigham & Women’s/Masachussetts General Hospital, clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School, and a Rhodes Scholar. Inspired by her own childhood illness and then her mother’s long battle with cancer, Dr. Wen is passionate about guiding patients to advocate for better care.

After graduating from college at the age of 18, she attended Washington University School of Medicine and won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford. She has been a fellow and consultant to the World Health Organization, the Brookings Institution, Eurasia Group, and China Medical Board. Dr. Wen has served as the National President of the American Medical Student Association and as National President of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine/Resident and Student Association. Recognized for her leadership in national and international health, she was selected to Chair the Young Professionals Commission, a group of 25 young health professionals chosen from around the world to re-envision global health professional education. In 2007, she was also selected by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to represent physicians-in-training on the Council on Graduate Medical Education, an advisory commission to Congress.

An active researcher in better ways to improve patient-physician communication, Dr. Wen has received grant support from the National Institutes of Health, the Beckman Foundation, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has published numerous scientific publications including in the Lancet, JAMA, and Annals of Emergency Medicine, and has served as a regular columnist for news outlets including The New Physician, Common Sense, and Medscape.com. With journalist Nick Kristof, she wrote a blog for The New York Times, along with articles in the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Worth magazine, and others. She is a regular blogger for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today, and is the author of the critically-acclaimed book on the importance of patient advocacy in healthcare reform, When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests.

Dr. Wen has been featured in TIME, Newsweek, ABC News, NPR, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and the award-winning HBO documentary Reporter. A professional speaker for ten years, she is sought after in the U.S. and around the world, with annual engagements throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Along with her husband, Sebastian, a native of South Africa, she travels from her home in Boston to five continents for research and speaking engagements. Click here for speaker testimonials and here for media/speaking clips.