Barbara J. McNeil, MD, PhD

Bio

Dr. Barbara McNeil is the Ridley Watts Professor  at Harvard Medical School and  Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and at the Brigham and Women's Hospital where she continues to practice nuclear medicine part time.  In 1988 she founded the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, a department that has become emblematic of the importance of a multidisciplinary department with faculty representing the fields of economics, medicine, statistics, and sociology. Dr. McNeil served as interim dean of Harvard Medical School in 2007 and 2016.

Dr. McNeil received her A.B. degree from Emmanuel College (summa cum laude), her M.D. from Harvard Medical School (cum laude), and her Ph.D. from Harvard University.  She also attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.  She interned in pediatrics at the MGH and did a residency in nuclear medicine at the then Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s).  

She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Blue Cross Technology Evaluation Commission and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.  She has been the chair or advisor of virtually all health policy groups in the United States including the above and others. 

Dr. McNeil’s original career involved research in decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis.   A series of three articles with S. James Adelstein and Emmett Keeler in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1975 provided a basis for future work in these fields in medicine; in other articles in 1983 she and her colleague James Hanley established a benchmark for research in comparative effectiveness.  More recently, her work has focused on quality of care and technology assessment.  For several years she coordinated several large studies comparing the value of alternative imaging modalities for patients with cancer.

CV

Curriculum Vitae