Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Mark G. Shrime, MD MPH PhD FACS is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology and of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of Research at the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and an otolaryngologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He is a contributor to the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, the Disease Control Priorities surgical volume, and a member of the Global Burden of Disease 2013-2017 expert panel.

Dr. Shrime received his MD from the University of Texas in 2001. Medical school was followed by a residency in otolaryngology through Columbia and Cornell, a fellowship in head and neck surgical oncology at the University of Toronto, and a second fellowship in microvascular reconstructive surgery, also at the University of Toronto. He went on to get an MPH in global health from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2011, and a PhD in health policy from Harvard in 2015, where his dissertation focused on financial risk and equity in surgery.

Since 2008, Dr. Shrime has been working as a surgeon with Mercy Ships throughout west and central Africa and has worked in Haiti and Saudi Arabia. Academically, his primary focus is on surgical delivery, where he has a specific interest in the intersection of health and impoverishment. His work aims to determine optimal policies and platforms for surgical delivery that maximize health benefits while simultaneously minimizing the risk of financial catastrophe faced by patients and families attempting to access surgical care. He has a secondary interest in decision-making at the end of life.