Neel Shah (born February 23, 1982) is an American physician, Harvard University assistant professor, Chief Medical Officer of Maven Clinic, and founder of the nonprofit organizations Costs of Care and March for Moms. Shah is married to MIT Professor Julie Shah.[3]

Neel Shah
Neel Shah at 2018 "March for Moms"
Born (1982-02-23) February 23, 1982 (age 42) [1]
Occupation(s)Chief Medical Officer, Maven Clinic[2]
SpouseJulie Shah
Academic background
Education2004, Sc.B., Brown University, Neuroscience with Honors, 2009; M.P.P., Harvard University, JFK School of Government; 2009, M.D., Brown Medical School[1]
Academic work
InstitutionsHarvard Medical School and Ariadne Labs

Early life and education

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Shah spent his childhood in Hyde Park, NY and New Jersey where he attended a small New Jersey charter school with his future wife Julie Shah.[4] He graduated from Brown University, for his bachelors and medical degrees, and Harvard University for his Master of Public Policy degree. He completed his residency training at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.[1] As an undergraduate, his mentor was Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Cooper, who he credits with teaching him to be an "audacious thinker" about complex systems.[5] Following residency, he joined his mentor Atul Gawande as core faculty at Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation between Brigham & Women's Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.[6] He is also an attending physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.[7] In 2016, he and his wife Julie were appointed as the Heads of House of the Sidney Pacific graduate community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[8]

Scholarship

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Dr. Shah's research focuses on improving maternal health. He founded the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Harvard University's Ariadne Labs to develop solutions to the challenges mothers face during childbirth.[1] He is senior author of the textbook Understanding Value-Based Healthcare[9] and created a framework to ensure value-based healthcare values Black lives.[10] In 2019, he moderated an event at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on bias in medicine.[11] He has explained how these biases impact mortality rates among Black and Native mothers to the American public through news reports[12] and the Fox television show, "The Resident." According to Dr. Shah, American women today are 50 percent more likely to die in childbirth compared to their own mothers.[13] Dr. Shah has also shown that use of Cesarean sections have increased by 500% in the last generation, and is a national leader in investigating and addressing the causes.[14]

Dr. Shah has demonstrated that hospital management[15] and even hospital architecture[16] can influence Cesarean section rates, and he has developed systems[17] to ensure c-sections are only performed when necessary. Shah has collaborated with his wife Julie to harness artificial intelligence to improve public health, including developing robotic assistants for labor and delivery nurses[16] and approaches to control the spread of the novel coronavirus.[18]

Shah proposed an ethical framework for medicine that includes financial harm to patients under the "do no harm" principle of medical ethics.[19] He participated in a project aiming to collect essays about instances in which inattention to costs has harmed patients — emulating the patient-safety movement's use of anecdotes about sponges left in abdomens or amputations of the wrong limb.[20]

Nonprofit

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Dr. Shah founded the nonprofit Costs of Care in 2009 dedicated to providing better healthcare at lower cost.[21] He also founded the nonprofit March for Moms to advance Federal legislation that ensures people can grow their families with dignity.[22] He has been vocal about the dangers of being pregnant and uninsured,[23] and the need to make American health care more affordable in order to address the maternal mortality crisis. He has described the "animating impulse" of both nonprofits as the need for dignity and not just safety in health care.[24]

Shah was featured in a "Doctor and Patient" New York Times column by Pauline Chen for creating the Teaching Value Project, aimed at educating doctors about how their decisions impact what patients pay for care.[25] In 2014, Shah was named one of the "40 smartest people in healthcare" by Becker's Hospital Review.[26]

Maven Clinic

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In July 2021, Shah was hired by NY City-based telehealth company Maven Clinic as its first Chief Medical Officer.[2] The company offers a virtual care platform for maternal and family health.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "CV Neel Shah, MD, MPP" (PDF). scholar.harvard.edu. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
  2. ^ a b "In a new role at health tech startup Maven, Neel Shah wants to make sure pregnant people aren't 'lost'". Stat. July 1, 2021. Retrieved October 14, 2021.
  3. ^ Graham, Jordan (October 5, 2014). "Team Eyes Improving Machines in Hospitals". Harvard University. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  4. ^ "What Happens to the Marriage When Both People Conquer the Corner Office?". Boston City Life. 19 December 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
  5. ^ "Harvard Medical School Professor Advances Healthcare Innovation". Health Leaders. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  6. ^ "Atul Gawande named to head cost-cutting health-care venture from Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  7. ^ "Neel T. Shah, MD - Beth Israel Deaconess". findadoc.bidmc.org. Retrieved 2021-06-21.
  8. ^ "Julie Shah, Sandy Alexandre receive campus houseteam appointments". MIT News. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  9. ^ "Understanding Value-Based Healthcare". McGraw-Hill Medical. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  10. ^ "Value-Based Health Care Must Value Black Lives". Health Affairs. September 3, 2020. doi:10.1377/forefront.20200831.419320. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ^ "Black Maternal Mortality: Clinical Instinct Vs Racism". Medpage Today. May 5, 2019. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  12. ^ "Dying to deliver: The race to prevent sudden death of new mothers". GMA. May 16, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  13. ^ "Heartbreaking story tied to maternal health crisis hits prime time". Ariadne Labs. Retrieved November 10, 2020.
  14. ^ "The Data Detective: One Doctor's Quest To Fix Cesarean Sections". Great Big Story. Retrieved November 10, 2020.
  15. ^ "Hospital management practices may put women at risk for C-sections, complications during childbirth". Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. July 11, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  16. ^ a b "American hospitals with fewer unnecessary C-sections have one thing in common: better design". Quartz. March 21, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  17. ^ "One Hospital's Plan to Reduce C-sections: Communicate". The New York Times. June 5, 2019. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  18. ^ Shah, Julie; Shah, Neel (April 6, 2020). "Fighting Coronavirus with Big Data". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  19. ^ Shah, Neel; Rhee, Michele (2012). "Birth of a Nonprofit" (PDF). Brown Medicine. Vol. 18, no. 3. Brown University. p. 27. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  20. ^ Rovner, Julie (December 28, 2010). "Stories Of Health Care Horrors Produce Happy Endings For A Few". National Public Radio. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  21. ^ "Harvard Medical School Professor Advances Healthcare Innovation". Health Leaders Media. February 12, 2020. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  22. ^ "Changemaker: Neel Shah, maternal health care reform advocate". The Scope Boston. November 7, 2019. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  23. ^ "Changemaker: The extraordinary danger of being pregnant and uninsured in Texas". Vox. December 19, 2019. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  24. ^ "In Conversation With… Neel Shah, MD, MPP". PS Net. December 19, 2019. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  25. ^ Chen, Pauline (March 15, 2012). "Getting Doctors to Think About Costs". New York Times. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  26. ^ Adamopoulos, Helen (March 4, 2014). "40 of the Smartest People in Healthcare". Becker's Hospital Review. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
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Neel Shah publications indexed by Google Scholar