Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
;)
Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, is a board-certified pediatrician and bestselling author. She is Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine, and the Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal, a professional development institute dedicated to the recovery of the values of service, harmlessness, compassion, reverence for life and mission in medicine. She has broadened and expanded the view of the physician's professional role. Her courses enable medical students to engage their patients' minds, emotions and spirit, which she believes is central to the full recovery of health.
Dr. Remen's work is with people facing life-threatening illness. In 1986 she co-founded the Commonweal Cancer Help program, featured by Bill Moyers in his 1993 PBS Special, Healing and the Mind. Her UCSF medical school course, The Healer's Art, was featured in U.S. News and World Report's "Best Graduate Schools 2002" as an example of excellence in innovative medical education. Author of the New York Times bestseller Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal and national bestseller My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging, her books have been translated into 14 languages and read by more than 600,000 people. They are also used as textbooks in many nursing schools and medical schools worldwide.