Notable Alums
Specialty: Emergency Medicine
Graduation Year: 1988
Michael VanRooyen
Michael VanRooyen, M.D. ’88, M.P.H., F.A.C.E.P., is vice chair of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Dr. VanRooyen completed a residency at University of Illinois. He relocated to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, where he was founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, for which Readers Digest named him one of its “Health Heroes.”
In 2004, Dr. VanRooyen moved to Boston, where he became vice chair of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a university-wide academic and research center that brings an interdisciplinary approach to promoting understanding of humanitarian crisis as a unique contributor to global health problems and to developing evidence-based approaches to humanitarian assistance. He also became chief medical strategist of Diagnotion, a provider of clinical decision support solutions, and a medical strategist at Clinical Architecture, a developer of software for the health care industry.
Dr. VanRooyen has worked extensively in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance internationally, including in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Congo and Honduras. From 2004 to 2005, he traveled with Physicians for Human Rights to Sudan to investigate health and human rights violations. He has considerable teaching experience in the field of disaster and humanitarian assistance and is widely published in that area.
Dr. VanRooyen completed a residency at University of Illinois. He relocated to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, where he was founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, for which Readers Digest named him one of its “Health Heroes.”
In 2004, Dr. VanRooyen moved to Boston, where he became vice chair of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a university-wide academic and research center that brings an interdisciplinary approach to promoting understanding of humanitarian crisis as a unique contributor to global health problems and to developing evidence-based approaches to humanitarian assistance. He also became chief medical strategist of Diagnotion, a provider of clinical decision support solutions, and a medical strategist at Clinical Architecture, a developer of software for the health care industry.
Dr. VanRooyen has worked extensively in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance internationally, including in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Congo and Honduras. From 2004 to 2005, he traveled with Physicians for Human Rights to Sudan to investigate health and human rights violations. He has considerable teaching experience in the field of disaster and humanitarian assistance and is widely published in that area.