Winfred Williams, MD

Dr. Winfred Williams graduated from Harvard College, cum laude, with a BA in Biochemical Sciences and went on to medical school at the New York University School of Medicine. He completed his residency and fellowship training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is the associate chief of the division of Nephrology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and founding director of the MGH Center for Diversity and Inclusion. He has a long, foundational track record at MGH in the development of programs to enhance the diversity of the physician workforce there and at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Over the past two decades, he has helped develop critical initiatives to support hospital-wide diversity goals. He is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in health policy addressing disparities in the care of end stage renal disease and organ transplantation. He has served (and continues to serve) on many national committees in professional societies for nephrology and transplantation—American Society of Nephrology (ASN), American Society of Transplantation (AST), and the Organ Procurement Transplant Network/United Network for Organ Sharing (OPTN/UNOS). He is past chair of the Minority Affairs Committees for UNOS and AST and elected member of the Board of Directors for OPTN/UNOS. In his research endeavors, Dr. Williams’ work on organ allocation focused on transplantation across select ABO incompatible blood groups to increase access to transplantation for ethnic minority patients. The findings of his 2015 landmark study — published as the cover article for the American Journal of Transplantation — helped provide the basis for a new kidney allocation algorithm, resulting in an increase in the rate of transplantation for ethnic minority patients in the U.S. In 2015, he received the HMS Lifetime Diversity Achievement Award and in 2021, the National Kidney Foundation award for Outstanding Nephrologist/Scientist with a lifelong contribution to the discipline of nephrology. In 2021, he was named Deputy Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, the first African American physician appointed to that position in the Journal’s 200-year history.