Michelle Morse, M.D., M.P.H.
Current Title: Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Commissioner
Current Organization: New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene
Expertise:
At time of Fellowship
Dr. Michelle Morse is the Acting Health Commissioner and Chief Medical Officer of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She leads the agency’s work in bridging public health and health care to reduce health inequities and serves as a key liaison to clinicians and clinical leaders across New York City. She previously served as Deputy Commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness where she led place-based and cross-cutting health equity programs.
Dr. Morse is an internal medicine and public health doctor who works to achieve health equity through global solidarity, social medicine and anti-racism education and activism. She is a general internal medicine physician, part-time hospitalist at Kings County Hospital, Co-Founder of EqualHealth, and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Morse’s continued commitment to advancing health equity and justice is informed by her experience in leadership roles as Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Heath, as a Soros Equality Fellow launching a global Campaign Against Racism and as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow with the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2024, Dr. Morse was named a TIME100Next honoree.
Fellow in 2019-2020
Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Commissioner
M.D., M.P.H.
State at beginning of Fellowship
Placement(s):
Array
Specialty/Discipline
Fellowship Year Biography
Incredible work since Fellowship
Michelle Morse is an internal medicine hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in the Division of Global Health Equity and an affiliate of Harvard University’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. Morse is also social medicine course director and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She co-founded EqualHealth, an organization supporting the development of Haitian health care professionals, where she serves as co-director. She works to strengthen medical education globally, to expand the teaching of social medicine in the United States and abroad, and to support health systems strengthening through equitable approaches to human resources for health.
Morse served as assistant program director for the internal medicine residency at BWH. She worked with several partners to found the Social Medicine Consortium (SMC), a global coalition seeking to address the miseducation of health professionals on the root causes of illness. She works on the SMC’s global Campaign Against Racism. Morse was previously the deputy chief medical officer for Partners in Health (PIH)and now serves on the PIH board of directors.
Morse earned a BS in French from the University of Virginia, an MD from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and an MPH from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. In 2018, Morse was named a Soros Equality Fellow. (Updated 09/01/19)
Current Info:
Current Title: Internal Medicine Hospitalist and Assistant Professor
Current Organization: New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene
Expertise: