Rishi K. Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil

Rishi K. Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil is a cardiologist, health policy researcher, and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He serves as Associate Director of the Smith Center for Outcomes Research, where he founded the Section of Health Policy Research, building it into a large, multidisciplinary team of 15 full-time clinician-investigators, research staff, and postdoctoral fellows. He is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.
 

Dr. Wadhera's research — informed by his frontline experience as a practicing cardiologist — applies the evidentiary rigor of clinical medicine to the evaluation of health policy, asking not just what policies intend, but how they actually affect patients. He is the principal investigator of three NIH R01 grants and a recipient of the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, and has authored more than 280 peer-reviewed publications in leading medical and health policy journals. He has advised senior leaders at the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Congressional committees, and is widely cited as a health policy expert by the New York Times, NPR, the Boston Globe, and NBC News. He serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and on standing advisory panels for the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review and the National Committee for Quality Assurance. A defining feature of his work is mentorship and faculty development. He has trained more than 40 junior investigators who have collectively first-authored more than 110 publications and secured competitive career development awards, with many advancing to independent academic careers across the country.