Amber Barnato, MD, MPH, MS
John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professor
Department Chair and Director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
Amber E. Barnato, MD, MPH, MS, is 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. She is trained in two medical specialties, public health and preventive medicine, and hospice and palliative medicine. Her 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. Her 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. Dr. Barnato has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2003, has been the Principal Investigator or Project Leader of more than 23 extramurally-funded awards, authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications, and mentored more than 70 pre-doctoral and post-doctoral scientists. Her academic program development work focuses on early career development for clinician-scientists, including establishing and directing the Clinical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh and founding the Dartmouth Health Equity Research Pathways Program at Dartmouth. She is the past Vice President of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) and will co-chair the 2024 SMDM annual meeting at Boston University. As part of her policy advocacy work, Dr. Barnato oversees the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care and is leading the development of the Dartmouth Health Equity Atlas. In addition to her academic work, she collects and shares stories from diverse family members regarding their experiences making life-support decisions for patients in the ICU at the website ICUStoryWeb.org. She lives with her husband and children in Hanover, NH, and enjoys reading novels, downhill skiing, and hiking.
View the Barnato Lab website