Lisa Iezzoni

Iezzoni attended the Harvard School of Public Health in the 1970's, from which she received a master's degree in health policy. She went on to enroll in Harvard Medical School, only to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her first year as a student there.[1][5][6] She received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1984.[7][8] She subsequently decided to become a medical research instead of a practicing doctor, because of the difficulties associated with practicing medicine with a disability at the time (the Americans with Disabilities Act had not yet been passed).[9][10]

After receiving her M.D., Iezzoni served as an assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine, while also working in the Health Care Research Unit there.[1] For sixteen years, she was director of research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where she became the first woman affiliated with the Center to be appointed a professor at Harvard Medical School.[5] In 2006, she became the associate director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Partners Institute for Health Policy (since renamed the Mongan Institute for Health Policy), and became its director in 2009.[5] One of the students she mentored at Harvard Medical School was Cheri Blauwet.[11] She wrote When Walking Fails, Mobility Problems of Adults with Chronic Conditions.[9]

In 1996, Iezzoni received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.[1] In 2000, she was named a member of the Institute of Medicine.[5] She has served on the National Quality Forum's board of directors, and has received the American College of Medical Quality's Founder's Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field. She was also included in a National Institutes of Health exhibit on American women physicians who are "changing the face of medicine".[12]