Jerry Avorn is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief Emeritus of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics (DoPE), and Co-Director of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL). A general internist, geriatrician, and drug epidemiologist, he pioneered the use of health care claims data to study patterns of medication use and outcomes, and developed the concept of academic detailing (educational outreach to prescribers) to improve medication use.
The Division he founded includes faculty with backgrounds in internal medicine, epidemiology, health services research and policy, law, ethics, and biostatistics.
His major areas of research include: the scientific and social factors that shape physicians’ drug choices; the identification and prevention of adverse drug effects; programs to improve the appropriateness of prescribing and drug taking; and the interaction between evidence, regulation, and economics in defining medication use.
Avorn did his undergraduate training at Columbia University in 1969, received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1974, and completed a residency in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He has served as president of the International Society for Pharmaco-Epidemiology and served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines. Dr. Avorn is the author or co-author of over 600 papers in the medical literature on medication use and its outcomes, and is one of the most highly-cited researchers working in the area of medicine and the social sciences. His book, Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take was published by Simon & Schuster in 2025. It was preceded by Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs, published by Knopf in 2004.