Jerry Avorn, MD

Dr. Jerry Avorn is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.  Dr. Avorn did his undergraduate work at Columbia University, received the M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1974, and completed a residency in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital. He joined the HMS faculty in 1978. While at the B.I., he was certified in Geriatric Medicine and helped to establish the Harvard Medical School program on aging, building a research program on the use and outcomes of medications in the elderly. 

His research group was among the first to use large electronic datasets of medication use and clinical outcomes, beginning in the early 1980s. His current work centers on the intended and adverse outcomes of  prescription drugs, physician prescribing practices, and medication policy. He founded the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics in 1998; it currently includes 70 people, including 21 faculty members representing clinicians from various medical specialties, epidemiologists, lawyers, health services researchers, and biostatisticians, as well as programmers, graduate students, and research support staff.

In addition to his work in pharmacoepidemiology and medication policy, Dr. Avorn originated the “academic detailing” approach to continuing medical education, in which non-commercial, evidence-based information about drugs is provided to doctors through educational outreach programs run by public-sector sponsors. He served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines and is the author or co-author of over 500 papers in the medical literature on medication use and its outcomes, and of the book,  Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs, now in its 11th printing. In 2017 he was recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers in medicine and social sciences (epidemiology).