Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH

Aaron Kesselheim is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of PORTAL. He founded PORTAL as an interdisciplinary research center focusing on the intersections among prescription drugs and medical devices, patient health outcomes, and regulatory practices and the law. He is also a primary care physician at the Phyllis Jen Center for Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Kesselheim is the author of over 700 publications in the peer-reviewed medical and health policy literature and was recognized as one of the top three most-cited health law scholars in the US from 2013–2020. He has testified before Congress on pharmaceutical policy, medical device regulation, generic drugs, modernizing clinical trials, and other topics. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, and in 2020 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Kesselheim is a core faculty member at the HMS Center for Bioethics, where he co-teaches a course on health policy, law, and bioethics and organizes a monthly policy and ethics seminar series. He also serves as a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches a yearly course on Food and Drug Administration Law and Policy. With PORTAL colleagues, he developed the HarvardX massive open online course Prescription Drug Regulation, Cost, and Access: Current Controversies in Context, which has reached over 100,000 participants worldwide.

Dr. Kesselheim received his MD and JD from the University of Pennsylvania and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a fellowship in general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School.