Harvard Health Books

Michael VanRooyen

Michael VanRooyen, MD, MPH is the Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) at Harvard University. He is also the Vice Chairman of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. VanRooyen has worked as an emergency physician with numerous relief organizations in over thirty countries affected by war and disaster, including Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, North Korea, Darfur-Sudan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has worked in the field as a relief expert with several non-governmental organizations, including CARE, Save the Children, Oxfam, Physicians for Human Rights and Samaritans Purse International Relief. He has been a policy advisor to several organizations, including the World Health Organization and UN OCHA. He is a member of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Health Cluster. He serves on the Board of Directors for the International Rescue Committee. He has testified before Congress and at numerous UN briefings on policy issues related to Iraq, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and served on a National Academies/GAO review of mortality in Darfur.

Domestically, Dr. VanRooyen worked with the American Red Cross to provide relief assistance at the site of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th, 2001. He also helped to coordinate the American Red Cross public health response to Hurricane Katrina, and oversaw the development of a 400 bed surgical field hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. He worked as a physician with the US Secret Service, NASA and with the US Public Health Service with the Navajo and Apache tribes in Arizona and New Mexico, respectively.

Dr. VanRooyen is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, where he teaches courses on humanitarian operations in war and disaster. In 2012, he founded the Humanitarian Academy at Harvard, an educational program to advance humanitarian professionalism. He has written over than 70 publications related to international emergency medicine development and humanitarian assistance. Dr. VanRooyen has also authored the textbook Emergent Field Medicine and Code Blue: The Making of an Emergency Physician.

Code Blue - Book Trailer

The doctors who work our emergency rooms bring people back from the brink of death on a regular basis. But what does it take to become an emergency physician? This book provides an inside look into one of the world’s most elite medical schools—as told by one of its most distinguished professors and physicians. In fast-paced, engaging prose, Dr. Michael VanRooyen takes us backstage at Harvard University Medical School as some of the world’s most highly trained doctors work to save lives, diagnose illnesses, and comfort grieving family members. It’s fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in how doctors work and train—and the life-altering challenges they face every day. - See more at: http://www.harvardhealthbooks.org/book/code-blue-making-emergency-physician/#sthash.fGd7okBU.dpuf

Duration: 02:40