Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is one of the world's preeminent institutions in medical education and research. The student body comprises more than 700 men and women in the M.D. program, more than 600 students in the Ph.D. program, and of those many are in the joint M.D.-Ph.D. programs, part of which is sponsored in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are taught by a faculty of more than 9,000, the largest graduate faculty at Harvard and the largest medical faculty in the world.

The research carried out by Harvard Medical School faculty is at the forefront of basic biomedical science and clinical research. In the school's distinguished 224-year history, 15 faculty members have been recognized for their work with the Nobel Prize.

Harvard Medical School has, since 1975, published information about health for the general public, through books, newsletters, magazines, a syndicated weekly newspaper column, and content licensed to Web sites (www.health.harvard.edu). Over 300 members of the faculty are engaged in writing and editing health information for the general public.

For its medical students, Harvard has inaugurated the New Pathway curriculum, a problem-solving, case-method approach to learning, which offers students the opportunity to come in contact with patient cases early in their studies. Students work and learn in 18 affiliated facilities:

Affiliated Hospitals and Research Institutions

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Cambridge Hospital
Center for Blood Research
Children's Hospital
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Forsyth Institute
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Joslin Diabetes Center
Judge Baker Children's Center
McLean Hospital
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts Mental Health Center
Mount Auburn Hospital
Schepens Eye Research Institute
Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital
Veterans Administration Medical Center (Brockton/West Roxbury)

Harvard Health Publications

Harvard Health Publications is a division of Harvard Medical School that creates consumer health information. Over 300 members of the Harvard Medical School faculty contribute to the creation and review of content. Harvard Health Publications creates books, newsletters, content for magazines and newspapers, and content for the Internet—all written for the general public.

Conflicts of Interest

Medpedia has a conflicts of interest policy for the faculty who write content that appears on Medpedia. The policy requires contributing faculty to reveal potential conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest may be financial relationships, affiliations with groups or organizations, or personal actions. The goal of this policy is to provide consumers with health information that is as free of bias as possible. Medpedia requires contributing faculty to excuse themselves from working on material and projects for which potential conflicts exist, that is, where a member of the faculty has a relationship that could potentially bias his or her work on a particular topic.