David U. Himmelstein is an American academic physician specializing in
internal medicine. He is a distinguished professor of
public health and
health policy
Health policy can be defined as the "decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific healthcare goals within a society".World Health Organization''Health Policy'' accessed 22 March 2011(Web archive)/ref> According to the ...
in the
CUNY School of Public Health
The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (commonly known as the CUNY School of Public Health, or CUNY SPH) is a public college, public American research and professional college within the borders of City University of New York ...
at
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...
, an adjunct clinical professor at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and a lecturer at
Harvard Medical School. He is also the co-founder (with
Steffie Woolhandler) of
Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization advocating for
single-payer healthcare in the United States.
Biography
Himmelstein received his M.D. from the
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He then completed his training at the
University of California San Francisco's Highland Hospital and his fellowship at Harvard Medical School, both in internal medicine. He was formerly the chief of the division of social and community medicine at
Cambridge Hospital
Cambridge Hospital is a community teaching hospital located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of three hospitals that are parts of Cambridge Health Alliance.
Services
The main Cambridge Hospital campus has a wide variety of health services ...
in
Massachusetts.
Research
Himmelstein is the author or co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles on health care-related issues like
medical bankruptcies
Medical debt refers to debt incurred by individuals due to health care costs and related expenses.
Medical debt is different from other forms of debt, because it is usually incurred accidentally or faultlessly. People do not plan to fall ill or ...
and health care costs in the United States. For example, a 1984 study he published on
patient dumping spurred the United States' Congress to pass the
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, a law which banned the practice.
[ With Woolhandler, he has also researched the effect of uninsurance on mortality.]
References
External links
Faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Himmelstein, David U.
Living people
American internists
Physicians from New York (state)
Hunter College faculty
Harvard Medical School faculty
Albert Einstein College of Medicine faculty
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni
University of California, San Francisco alumni
Harvard Medical School alumni
American public health doctors
Year of birth missing (living people)