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:
https:
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http:
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.
Utility of advance care planning billing codes: a cross-sectional analysis of U.S. hospitalists' documentation. Hidden figures underlying quality measures: revealing hidden racial inequalities in end-of-life cancer care delivery: a cohort study. Feasibility and Usability of a Web-Based Peer Support Network for Care Partners of People With Serious Illness (ConnectShareCare): Observational Study. 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. "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. Assessing a behavioral nudge on healthcare leaders' intentions to implement evidence-based practices. A Quality Improvement Initiative for Inpatient Advance Care Planning. A Web-Based Peer Support Network to Help Care Partners of People With Serious Illness: Co-Design Study. Measuring Local-Area Racial Segregation for Medicare Hospital Admissions. "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. |