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Amber E. Barnato, MD, MS, MPH

Title(s)
Chair and Professor of The Dartmouth Institute
Professor of Medicine
John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professorship in Health Policy and Clinical Practice

Department(s)
The Dartmouth Institute
Medicine

Education
BA (Physiology) University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California
MD Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
MPH (Health Policy and Management) University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California
MS (Health Services Research), Stanford University, Stanford, California

Programs
Dartmouth Cancer Center
The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice

Curriculum Vitae
Barnato_A_CV_2025-06-02.doc

NIH Biosketch
Barnato_A_BIO_2025-06-02.pdf

Websites
https://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/tdi/profile/amber-barnato-md-mph-ms/
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/barnato-lab/
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/levyincubator
http://icustoryweb.org

Contact Information

1 Medical Center Drive
Lebanon NH 03756

Office: WTRB #515
Phone: 6036530829
Email: Amber.Barnato@Dartmouth.edu

Asst. Email: TDI.Directors.Office@Dartmouth.edu


Professional Interests

1) Improving serious illness and end-of-life care
2) Physician communication decision making
3) Advancing health equity and reducing health disparities
4) Promoting careers of health services researchers underrepresented in medicine and health sciences

Grant Information

Current:
P01 AG019783-21 (NIA)
Barnato (Overall PI, Core Lead, Project Lead)
08/15/2023-07/31/2028
Causes and Consequences of Healthcare Inequities in ADRD

K23 MD015277 (NIMHD)
Chuang (PI), Barnato (Mentor)  
09/18/2021-05/31/2025 
Targeting Bias to Reduce Disparities in End-of-Life Care (BRiDgE) 

RSG-22-128-01-HOPS (American Cancer Society)
Khayal (PI); Role: Co-investigator
01/2023 – 12/2027
Identifying hospital and patient social determinants of health factors from hospital-level cancer healthcare disparities

Completed, last 2 years:

P01 AG019783  (NIA)
Barnato (Overall PI, Core Lead, Project Lead)  
05/01/2018-07/31/2023 
Causes and Consequences of Healthcare Efficiency 

132358-RSG-18-017-01-CPHPS (American Cancer Society)
Barnato (PI)  
07/01/2018-06/30/2022 
Variation in Cancer Centers’ End-of-Life Quality - Role of Norms 

R21AG065704 (NIA)
Barnato/Khayal (MPI)         
09/15/2020-08/31/2023
Classification of the Typologies of Hospital Deaths 

Courses Taught

Past:
PH100 Inferential Methods, MPH program (2022)
Population Health and Preventive Care, MHCDS program (2019, 2020)

Mentoring Information

I am an experienced mentor and have been recognized with the Distinguished Mentor Award from the Institute for Clinical Research Education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In addition to advising more than 60 medical students in my role directing a dual MD/MS program at the University of Pittsburgh, I have served on 6 PhD committees and served as primary or secondary mentor to 8 pre-doctoral students, 9 post-doctoral fellows, and 12 faculty, including 10 NIH-funded K-awardees. Of these K-awardees, 7 have progressed to independence, 2 are in their training period and 1 unexpectedly died before completing her K08. In addition to my mentoring experience, I previously served as a member of the leadership team of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Clinical Research Education before moving to Dartmouth. This included oversight of a portfolio of early-career institutional training awards including T35, T32, and KL2 programs. At Dartmouth I am the Director of an organization-spanning institute at Dartmouth that launched 4 educational programs (MPH, MS, MHCDS, and PhD), the Dartmouth Health Equity Research Pathways career development programs which provides funding and support for early career scientists dedicated to health equity research from undergraduates through junior faculty, and the Levy Incubator which provides structured support for Geisel faculty and their teams to redesign healthcare delivery.

Biography

I am the John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. I am trained in two medical specialties, public health and preventive medicine and hospice and palliative medicine. My research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of variation in end-of-life intensive care unit (ICU) and life-sustaining treatment use among seriously ill older adults using an array of scientific methods, including claims data analysis, participant observation and interviewing, high-fidelity simulation experiments, and randomized behavioral trials. My work increasingly focuses on the interplay between organizational norms, provider-patient communication, and implicit cognition, and how these phenomena produce racial disparities in end-of-life treatment. I have been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2003, have been the Principal Investigator or Project Leader of more than 25 extramurally-funded awards, authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications, and mentored more than 70 pre-doctoral and post-doctoral scientists. My academic program development work focuses on early career development for clinician-scientists (see Mentoring, above). I am the past Vice President of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) and co-chaired the 2024 SMDM annual meeting at Boston University. As part of my policy advocacy work, I oversees the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care and am leading the development of the Dartmouth Health Equity Atlas. In addition to my academic work, I collects and shares stories from diverse family members regarding their experiences making life-support decisions for patients in the ICU at the website www.ICUStoryWeb.org. I live in Hanover with my husband, Greg Crowley, Director of the Office of Impact and Belonging at Dartmouth Health, and our two children. I enjoy reading novels, hiking, and alpine skiing.


Selected Publications

 

Utility of advance care planning billing codes: a cross-sectional analysis of U.S. hospitalists' documentation.
Fanouraki E, MacMartin MA, Barnato AE, Murphy M, Mohan D
BMC Res Notes. 2025 Jul 1;18(1):258. doi: 10.1186/s13104-025-07277-1. Epub 2025 Jul 1.
PMID: 40597376

Hidden figures underlying quality measures: revealing hidden racial inequalities in end-of-life cancer care delivery: a cohort study.
Khayal IS, Shin JJ, Brooks GA, Barnato AE, Akre ER, Lewinson T, Farid AM, O'Malley AJ
Lancet Reg Health Am. 2025 Jul;47:101135. doi: 10.1016/j.lana.2025.101135. Epub 2025 Jun 3.
PMID: 40529849

Feasibility and Usability of a Web-Based Peer Support Network for Care Partners of People With Serious Illness (ConnectShareCare): Observational Study.
Van Citters AD, Holthoff MM, Young C, Eck SM, Cullinan AM, Carney S, O'Donnell EA, King JR, Govindan M, Gustafson D, Tomlin SC, Holmes AB, Bradley AD, Oliver BJ, Wilson MM, Nelson EC, Barnato AE, Kirkland KB
JMIR Form Res. 2025 Jun 11;9:e70206. doi: 10.2196/70206. Epub 2025 Jun 11.
PMID: 40498660

An electronic pre-visit agenda-setting questionnaire in ambulatory palliative care is feasible and acceptable to patients, care partners, and clinicians: A mixed methods evaluation.
Wilson MM, Broglio K, Vergo MT, Barnato AE, Cullinan AM, Doherty JR, King JR, Devito AM, Holmes AB, Hinson JJ, Holt KR, Holthoff MM, Kobin EG, Legere AR, Nelson EC, O'Donnell EA, Saunders CH, Tomlin SC, Kirkland KB, Van Citters AD
Palliat Med. 2025 Apr;39(4):507-516. doi: 10.1177/02692163251321327. Epub 2025 Feb 25.
PMID: 39995268

"I didn't go into medicine just to be on the phone": Emotional Expression as Sacrosanct During Derious Illness Patient-Physician Advanced Cancer Care Communication During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Kaur-Gill S, Drummond DK, Zhang J, Butcher R, Eggly S, Schifferdecker K, Brooks GA, Murray GF, Kapadia NS, Hanson LC, Barnato AE
Health Commun. 2024 Dec 12;:1-13. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2024.2438338. Epub 2024 Dec 12.
PMID: 39663994

Assessing a behavioral nudge on healthcare leaders' intentions to implement evidence-based practices.
Crawford M, O'Malley AJ, Meara E, Fraze TK, Barnato AE
PLoS One. 2024;19(11):e0311442. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311442. Epub 2024 Nov 22.
PMID: 39576792

A Quality Improvement Initiative for Inpatient Advance Care Planning.
Sacks OA, Murphy M, O'Malley J, Birkmeyer N, Barnato AE
JAMA Health Forum. 2024 Oct 4;5(10):e243172. doi: 10.1001/jamahealthforum.2024.3172. Epub 2024 Oct 4.
PMID: 39365606

A Web-Based Peer Support Network to Help Care Partners of People With Serious Illness: Co-Design Study.
O'Donnell EA, Van Citters AD, Khayal IS, Wilson MM, Gustafson D, Barnato AE, Buccellato AC, Young C, Holthoff MM, Korsunskiy E, Tomlin SC, Cullinan AM, Steinbaugh AC, Hinson JJ, Johnson KR, Williams A, Thomson RM, Haines JM, Holmes AB, Bradley AD, Nelson EC, Kirkland KB
JMIR Hum Factors. 2024 May 8;11:e53194. doi: 10.2196/53194. Epub 2024 May 8.
PMID: 38717809

Measuring Local-Area Racial Segregation for Medicare Hospital Admissions.
Akre EL, Chyn D, Carlos HA, Barnato AE, Skinner J
JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Apr 1;7(4):e247473. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.7473. Epub 2024 Apr 1.
PMID: 38639935

"Postponing it Any Later Would not be so Great": A Cognitive Interview Study of How Physicians Decide to Initiate Goals of Care Discussions in the Hospital.
Chuang E, Gugliuzza S, Ahmad A, Aboodi M, Gong MN, Barnato AE
Am J Hosp Palliat Care. 2024 Nov;41(11):1307-1321. doi: 10.1177/10499091231222926. Epub 2023 Dec 18.
PMID: 38111300

View more publications on PubMed