Physician-executive, internist, and public health innovator Monica Bharel will deliver the keynote speech at the Harvard Medical School/Harvard School of Dental Medicine Class Day ceremony on May 28.
Bharel leverages data, technology, and policy to drive innovation and equity in health. Throughout her career, she has been dedicated to mentorship and to championing fairness and justice in health and health care.
Bharel is the clinical lead for global health, public health, and public sector health at Google Health. There, she oversees an international team of clinicians focused on bringing technological innovations and AI tools to public health systems to reduce global health inequities.
She is also vice chair of the Harvard University board of overseers and a former HMS instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Previously, Bharel served as a senior advisor to the mayor of Boston and as commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
As mayoral advisor, she enabled a multi-agency overhaul of the city’s response to homelessness, mental health, and substance use disorders.
As the Commonwealth’s chief physician for six years, she oversaw the state’s response to the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. During her tenure, Massachusetts saw a significant decline in overdose deaths and was ranked the healthiest state in the nation in 2017. Under Bharel’s leadership, the Commonwealth also developed the nation’s first integrated public health data warehouse, providing a model for using data to address social determinants of health.
Prior to becoming commissioner, she was chief medical officer for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, whose founding physician is James O’Connell, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Mass General. There, she spearheaded quality improvement initiatives and successfully advocated for health policy reforms.
A respected voice in national policy and scholarship, Bharel has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and has been featured in major media outlets. She has testified before U.S. congressional subcommittees and served as an invited expert to the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization.
Bharel earned a medical degree from what was then the Boston University School of Medicine and a master of public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health through the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Policy Leadership at Harvard University. She completed her residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital/Boston Medical Center and has practiced general internal medicine for over 20 years.
