Faculty Directors
Neal Baer, MD
Twitter: @NealBaer
Neal Baer, M.D., is an award-winning showrunner, television writer/producer, physician, author and a public health advocate and expert. He currently serves as Executive Producer and Showrunner of the third season of Designated Survivor, starring Kiefer Sutherland and coming back to audiences globally on Netflix in the summer 2019. He was most recently an Executive Producer and Showrunner for the hit CBS television series Under The Dome. Previously, he was Executive Producer of the CBS medical drama A Gifted Man, as well as the Executive Producer of the hit NBC television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit from 2000-2011, where he oversaw all aspects of producing and writing the show, with a budget of $100 million. During his tenure, among the awards the series won include the Shine Award, People’s Choice Award, the Prism Award, Edgar Award, Sentinel for Health Award and the Media Access Award. Actors on the show have won six Emmys and the Golden Globe. The series regularly appeared among the top ten television dramas in national ratings.
In January 2020, Dr. Baer attended the Sundance Film Festival, where the film he executive produced, Welcome to Chechnya, won a Special Jury Award. This February, Welcome to Chechnya screened at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Teddy Award for the outstanding film on LGBTQ issues. The documentary premiered on HBO in June 2020.
Jason Silverstein, PhD
Twitter: @Jason_Reads
Email: jason_silverstein [at] hms.harvard.edu
Jason Silverstein is a Lecturer and the Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He has written more than one hundred reported pieces and commentaries. His work has investigated how racial residential segregation becomes embodied as illness and disease, structural violence and the war on drugs, and the politics of health care in the United States.
Dr. Silverstein has written for VICE, GQ, The Atlantic, Esquire, The New Republic, The New York Times, Men’s Health, The Guardian, Slate, and The Nation, and his work has been featured by MSNBC, NPR, HuffPost Live, BET, and Big Think, among others. Dr. Silverstein holds a Ph.D. and master's in Anthropology from Harvard, a master's in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Silverstein is an award-winning teacher and has won five Certificates of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard College. He has supervised undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard College, the Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School.
Course Instructors and Guest Lecturers
Mercedes Becerra, Sc.D., professor of global health and social medicine, studies the burden of tuberculosis in the child and adult household contacts of tuberculosis patients, and teaches global health and the arts. Read more
Utibe R. Essien, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a Core Investigator in the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion. Read more
Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Kolokotrones University Professor and the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Read more
Ricardo Pérez González, playwright, member of the Emerging Writer's Group at the Public Theater, and recipient of two grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Read more
Suzanne Koven, MD, MFA author of Letter to a Young Female Physician Notes from a Medical Life, primary care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and inaugural Writer in Residence at Mass General. Read more
Martha Montello, PhD, lecturer for the Center for Bioethics and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Editor-in-Chief of the Johns Hopkins University Press journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Read more
Tina Rosenberg, New York Times journalist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
Lisa Sanders, MD, writer of the Diagnosis column for the New York Times Magazine and the Think Like a Doctor column featured in the New York Times blog, The Well. Her column was the inspiration for the Fox program House MD (2004-2012). Read more
Doris Sommer, PhD, director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University, is Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies and teaches global health and the arts. Read more
Jay Winsten, PhD, architect of the Designated Driver campaign and founding director of the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Lisa Wong, MD, associate co-director of the Arts and Humanities Initiative at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wong is a pediatrician, musician, arts advocate, and author. Read more.
We invite you to learn more about the Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health on this website. Make sure to check out our FAQ page, too. If you have additional questions, please email the program at mmh@hms.harvard.edu. You can follow us on twitter at @MediaandMed
