Harvard Health Experts and Contributors

Julie Corliss is the executive editor of the Harvard Heart Letter. Before working at Harvard, she was a medical writer and editor at HealthNews, a consumer newsletter affiliated with The New England Journal of Medicine. She is co-author of Break Through Your Set Point: How to Finally Lose the Weight You Want and Keep it Off. Julie earned a BA in biology from Oberlin College and a master’s certificate in science communication from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Howard LeWine, M.D., is a practicing internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Chief Medical Editor at Harvard Health Publishing, and editor in chief of Harvard Men’s Health Watch.

Dr. Robert H. Shmerling is the former clinical chief of the division of rheumatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), and is a current member of the corresponding faculty in medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a practicing rheumatologist for over 30 years, Dr. Shmerling engaged in a mix of patient care, teaching, and research. His research interests center on diagnostic studies in patients with musculoskeletal symptoms, and rheumatic and autoimmune diseases. He has published research regarding infectious arthritis, medical ethics, and diagnostic test performance in rheumatic disease. Having retired from patient care in 2019, Dr. Shmerling now works as a senior faculty editor for Harvard Health Publishing.

Peter Wayne, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Research for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly based at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also author of The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi.

Charlie Schmidt is an award-winning freelance science writer based in Portland, Maine. In addition to writing for Harvard Health Publishing, Charlie has written for Science magazine, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Environmental Health Perspectives, Nature Biotechnology, and The Washington Post.

Mallika Marshall, MD, is an Emmy-award winning journalist and physician who serves as Medical Director at WBZ-TV in Boston. A practicing physician who is Board Certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics, Marshall serves on staff at Harvard Medical School and practices at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Chelsea Urgent Care Clinic and MGH Revere Health Center. Marshall is currently a Contributing Editor for Harvard Health Publishing (HHP), the publishing division of Harvard Medical School, and host of HHP’s e-learning courses. She has nearly 15 years of media experience, including serving as “HealthWatch” Anchor at WBZ-TV News for 10 years beginning in 2000. A cum laude graduate of Harvard College, Marshall received her medical degree with honors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She completed her medical residency at Harvard in internal medicine and pediatrics. She is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Society, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of Black Journalists. She also has served on the Board of Trustees for the Urgent Care Foundation and the Board of Directors for Dress for Success Boston. In addition to numerous medical awards, she was an Associate Editor of the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide.

Dr. Wynne Armand is an associate physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where she provides primary care; an assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School; and associate director for MGH Center for the Environment and Health. She is a faculty editor for MGH Primary Care Office InSite (PCOI), a website that provides patient information as well as guidelines for practicing physicians and health care staff. Dr. Armand earned her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where she also completed her internal medicine residency in a program dedicated to training physicians to become leaders in the care of the underserved. She has an interest in promoting climate-smart health care.

Matthew Solan is the executive editor of Harvard Men’s Health Watch. He previously served as executive editor for UCLA Health’s Healthy Years and as a contributor to Duke Medicine’s Health News and Weill Cornell Medical College’s Women Nutrition Connection and Women’s Health Advisor. Matthew’s articles on medicine, exercise science, and nutrition have appeared in Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Runner’s World, and Yoga Journal. He earned a master of fine arts in writing from the University of San Francisco and a bachelor of science in journalism from the University of Florida.

Elizabeth Pegg Frates, MD (Beth) is a pioneer in lifestyle medicine education, and an award-winning teacher at Harvard Medical School as well as Harvard Extension School. She currently practices lifestyle medicine through her health and wellness coaching company, Wellness Synergy, LLC. Beth graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, majoring in both psychology and biology. She then attended Stanford Medical School, interned at Massachusetts General Hospital, and completed her residency in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, where she served as chief resident. After residency, Beth focused on stroke and specifically stroke prevention. After co-authoring a book titled Life After Stroke: The Guide to Recovering Your Health and Preventing Another Stroke, Beth spent a great deal of time lecturing and writing about health and prevention topics, including nutrition and exercise. Fascinated by how to empower people to adopt healthy habits, Beth pursued further training in behavior change through coaching programs and motivational interviewing courses. Beth has co-authored papers and book chapters on behavior change. In 2008, Beth developed the concept of a lifestyle medicine interest group (LMIG) and has been successfully running one at Harvard Medical School since that time. These LMIGs offer a parallel curriculum for students interested in healthy habits to learn about basic concepts in lifestyle medicine through “lunch and learn” lectures. As board liaison for the Professionals In Training (PiT) program at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM), Beth has created standardized PowerPoints on Lifestyle Medicine Basics, Exercise Prescription, Nutrition, and Behavior Change for faculty and students wanting to launch their own LMIG at their school. These are available on the ACLM website. Since 1996, Beth has been on faculty at Harvard Medical School and has won multiple teaching awards for her work in many different pre-clinical core courses including nutrition, musculoskeletal system, central nervous system, endocrine system, and introduction to the professions. She is an assistant professor (part-time) at the Harvard department of physical medicine and rehabilitation. Most recently, Beth created an entire college curriculum on lifestyle medicine for a Harvard Extension School undergraduate and graduate-level course, which many physicians and pre-meds have taken each year. This is the first full-semester lifestyle medicine course offered at Harvard University. Beth received an award for her teaching in this course as well, and the course was chosen as a case study for successful courses at the Harvard Extension School. Merging her training in physical medicine and rehabilitation with her training in lifestyle medicine and coaching, Beth has developed novel wellness programs for stroke survivors and their caregivers based on lifestyle medicine principles (nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, connection). Currently, Beth serves as the director of wellness programming at the Stroke Institute for Research and Recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate.

Dr. Monique Tello is a practicing physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, director of research and academic affairs for the MGH DGM Healthy Lifestyle Program, clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, and author of the evidence-based lifestyle change guide Healthy Habits for Your Heart. She completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency training program at Yale/New Haven Hospital. After residency, she earned a master’s in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and fellowship in general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is half Latina, speaks Spanish, and maintains a close relationship with her extended family in Guatemala. She is married to local sports broadcaster Bob Socci, and they have two young children, one with autism. She writes a popular blog, www.DrMoniqueTello.com, about achieving balance, health, and wellness from the perspective of doctor and mother.

Kathy McManus is Director of the Department of Nutrition and Director of the Dietetic Internship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Boston. In addition, she serves as the Director for Nutrition at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and the Director of Nutrition and Behavior Modification Programs for the Program for Weight Management at the Brigham. Ms. McManus has been involved with a number of cardiovascular and obesity related research trials during her years at the Brigham including an NIH funded obesity study, POUNDS (Preventing Overweight Using Novel Dietary Strategies) Lost as a co-investigator.

Dr. Peter Grinspoon is the author of the memoir Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction. He currently practices as a primary care physician at an inner-city clinic in Boston and is on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital. He teaches medicine at Harvard Medical School. He spent two years as an associate director for the Physician Health Service, part of the Massachusetts Medical Society, working with physicians who suffer from substance use disorders. Dr. Grinspoon graduated with honors in philosophy from Swarthmore College. Before medical school, he spent five years as a campaign director at Greenpeace, working on the nuclear-free seas campaign. He attended medical school at Boston University School of Medicine. His internship and residency were in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Today he is proudly 10 years clean. He lives in Newton, MA, with his wife Liz Grinspoon and his blended family.

Steve Calechman is a contributing editor for Men’s Health, a writer for MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program, and his work has appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Greentech Media, Fatherly, and BabyCenter. For over 25 years as a journalist, he’s written about everything from handling stress like an Alaska bush pilot to computational neuroscience to how to change your mind mid-sentence with your child. If you’d like to visit his website at stevecalechman.com, he won’t try to stop you.

Kelly Bilodeau is the former executive editor of Harvard Women’s Health Watch. She began her career as a newspaper reporter and later went on to become a managing editor at HCPro, a Boston-area healthcare publishing company, where she covered healthcare industry trends and topics such as patient safety, medical billing, radiology, and breast imaging. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Magazine, as well as numerous healthcare trade publications.

Ellen S. Glazer, LICSW, is a clinical social worker whose practice focuses on infertility. pregnancy loss, third-party reproduction, and adoption. She is the author or co-author of six books in the field, most recently Having Your Baby Through Egg Donation, which she wrote with Dr. Evelina Sterling.

Dr. Andrew E. Budson is chief of cognitive & behavioral neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, lecturer in neurology at Harvard Medical School, and chair of the Science of Learning Innovation Group at the Harvard Medical School Academy. Graduating cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1993, he has given over 750 local, national, and international grand rounds and other talks; published over 125 scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters; and co-authored or edited eight books. His book Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory: What’s Normal, What’s Not, and What to Do About It explains how individuals can distinguish changes in memory due to Alzheimer’s versus normal aging; what medications, vitamins, diets, and exercise regimens can help; and the best habits, strategies, and memory aids to use; it is being translated into Chinese and Korean. His book Memory Loss, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Dementia: A Practical Guide for Clinicians has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. His book Six Steps to Managing Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia: A Guide for Families teaches caregivers how they can manage all the problems that come with dementia—and still take care of themselves. His latest book, Why We Forget and How to Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory, explains the science of memory and how to use that knowledge to improve our ability to remember in daily life. Website: Andrew Budson, MD Facebook: Andrew Budson, MD Twitter: @abudson

Dr. Anthony L. Komaroff is the Steven P. Simcox/Patrick A. Clifford/James H. Higby Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, senior physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and editor in chief of the Harvard Health Letter. He was director of the division of general medicine and primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for 15 years, and is the founding editor of Journal Watch, a summary medical information newsletter for physicians published by the Massachusetts Medical Society/New England Journal of Medicine.

Teresa Fung is an adjunct professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received her BS and MS in nutrition from Cornell University, and her ScD in both nutrition and epidemiology from HSPH. She began her career as a registered dietitian at Yale-New Haven Hospital. In the last 20 years, her research has focused on methodology that assesses the quality of the entire diet, in particular the development of a number of diet quality indexes. She also examines the association of these diet quality measures and risk of chronic disease such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, elderly fracture, and weight change. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Nutrition, member of the editorial board for the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and a member of the Best Diet panel at U.S. News & World Report. She is also a professor of nutrition at Simmons University in Boston.

Marc B. Garnick, M.D., is an internationally renowned expert in medical oncology and urologic cancer. A clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, he also maintains an active clinical practice at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has dedicated his career to the development of new therapies for the treatment of prostate cancer. Dr. Garnick is the Editor in Chief of HarvardProstateKnowledge.org and Harvard Medical School’s Annual Report on Prostate Diseases, both of which emerged from his keen interest in explaining issues of medical importance to patients and their families to help them make appropriate treatment choices.

Harvey Simon founded the Harvard Men’s Health Watch in August 1996 and was its editor in chief until retiring in May 2012. Dr. Simon is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Health Sciences Technology Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Simon completed his post-graduate training at the National Institutes of Health and the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he provided primary medical care to patients for more than 30 years. Dr. Simon was a founding member of the Harvard Cardiovascular Health Center. He also served on the Massachusetts Governor’s Committee on Physical Fitness and Sports and was elected to Fellowship in the American College of Physicians. As author of more than 100 scientific articles and medical textbook chapters, including many on diet and exercise, Dr. Simon has been an active contributor to medical research. He is also committed to medical education, and he was honored to receive the London Prize for Excellence in Teaching from Harvard and MIT. As the author of many consumer health publications, Dr. Simon is dedicated to informing people about health and medicine. He has written scores of articles for newspapers and magazines ranging from the Boston Globe and Washington Post to Scientific American and Newsweek. He has also authored six health books, including The Harvard Medical School Guide to Men’s Health, Staying Well, Conquering Heart Disease, and The No Sweat Exercise Plan. Dr. Simon has received many national awards for his consumer health writing.

Michael Craig Miller, M.D., was Editor in Chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter from August 2000 to March 2012. Published monthly, the Harvard Mental Health Letter was read widely by professionals and non-professionals alike. Dr. Miller’s writing on mental health topics has appeared in Newsweek, the Boston Globe and in syndicated articles that appear in newspapers nationwide. He has appeared as a commentator on the Today Show, The Martha Stewart Show, ABC News, CNN, and NPR and for media outlets in the Boston area. In practice for more than 30 years, Dr Miller is a member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School and on the medical staff at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Peter Wehrwein was the editor of the Harvard Health Letter from 1999 to May 2012. He is currently a freelance writer and editor, and contributes to the Harvard Health blog and HarvardProstateKnowledge.org. Before editing the Health Letter, he was editor of the Harvard Public Health Review and director of development communications at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to working at Harvard, Wehrwein was a reporter for newspapers in Albany, N.Y., Union City, N.J., Brooklyn, N.Y., and Big Lake, Minn. He has written for Newsweek, The Lancet, Managed Care, and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Wehrwein was a journalism fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1993-94. He earned a B.A. in history from Yale University in 1980.

Julie Silver, M.D., is the Chief Editor of Books at Harvard Health Publishing and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She is an award-winning writer who has written many books that focus on healing including After Cancer Treatment: Heal Faster, Better, Stronger and What Helped Get Me Through: Cancer Survivors Share Wisdom and Hope. Her work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The CBS Early Show, The Today Show, Parade, NPR, USA Today, The Boston Globe and Prevention Magazine. Dr. Silver is also the director of an annual 3-day Harvard course that is open to all healthcare providers and others, titled “Publishing Books, Memoirs and Other Creative Nonfiction”. To learn more about Dr. Silver’s work, visit her website at JulieSilverMD.com.

Jeff Szymanski, PhD, is the executive director of the International OCD Foundation in Boston, a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School, and author of The Perfectionist’s Handbook (Wiley, 2011).

Daniel Pendick is the former executive editor of the Harvard Men’s Health Watch. He has previously served as editor and chief writer for the Cleveland Clinic Men’s Health Advisor and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine’s Focus On Healthy Aging. Dan earned a master of art’s degree in the history of science and medicine from the University of Wisconsin in 1992, and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 1998-99. He is also a lecturer in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches the next generation of physicians and biomedical researchers how to communicate more effectively with each other and the general public.