Rachel Vreeman

Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, is the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Health System Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health. She is also a Professor of Pediatrics. A pediatrician and health services researcher, Dr. Vreeman has extensive history of leadership building Global Health research programs to generate the evidence needed to improve care systems worldwide. Her own research focuses on improving the care of children and adolescents living with HIV within resource-limited settings, and her approach to building partnerships to transform global health systems grew out of 20 years of work in East Africa supporting development of a care system that supported more than 300,000 families living with HIV.
Dr. Vreeman is an international expert on children’s adherence to HIV therapy, supporting disclosure of HIV status, HIV-related stigma, and mental health and other behavioral challenges for adolescents living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. She has served on scientific and technical advisories guiding the global care of children and adolescents living with HIV, including for the World Health Organization, the International AIDS Society, and US National Institutes of Health. Dr. Vreeman leads Mount Sinai’s partnership with the Guyana Ministry of Health to transform Guyana’s national health systems, as well as Mount Sinai’s strategic partnerships in Nepal, Kenya, Ghana and in Queens, New York.
In addition to her academic research pursuits, Dr. Vreeman is the co-author of three popular books debunking medical myths and misinformation. These best-selling books, Donʼt Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-truths, and Outright Lies about your Body and Health, Donʼt Cross Your Eyes… Theyʼll Get Stuck Like That! And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked, and Donʼt Put THAT in THERE! And 69 Other Sex Myths Debunked, provide light-hearted but evidence-based reviews of the science that explains why so many of those weird and worrisome things we think about our bodies are mistaken. Dr. Vreemanʼs myth-busting research has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Newsweek, and many other publications. She has appeared on Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, CNN, Dr. Oz, BBC News Hour and many other national and international television and radio shows.