University News | May 11, 2011

Atul Gawande to address medical and dental school graduating classes

The surgeon and professor of health policy won a National Magazine Award this week.

Atul Gawande—associate professor in the department of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital—will be the Class Day speaker for HMS and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine on May 26.

Gawande was the subject of "The Unlikely Writer," a profile in the September-October 2009 issue. He is the author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right; Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance; and Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. He regularly writes about medicine and healthcare policy for the New Yorker, and just this week won a National Magazine Award for "Letting Go," his May 2010 article on end-of-life care.

Gawande previously spoke at the medical and dental schools' Class Day, in 2005 (read the speech text as a PDF file); and in 2009, he spoke at the HSPH diploma ceremony (read the speech text as a Microsoft Word document).

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