Teaching

All Images courtesy Stu Rosner for HMS

Dr. Neal Baer bridges medicine, storytelling, and social change, training future clinicians, writers, and policymakers to use narrative as a tool for public impact. His courses—including Storytelling Methods to Promote Health and Well-Being and Media and Medicine—show students how to translate data into empathy and action. In 2022, he founded Harvard’s Master of Science degree program in Media, Medicine, and Health, pioneering an interdisciplinary model that links the arts, storytelling, and global health. Across more than a decade of teaching, Baer has demonstrated how story-driven thinking can influence policy, improve care, and deepen our understanding of what it means to heal.

Founding Director, Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health (Harvard, 2022–2026)


Founding Co-Director, Certificate Program in Media and Medicine (Harvard, 2019–2026)


Course Creator, Storytelling Methods to Promote Health and Well-Being (Harvard, 2022–2026)


Senior Lecturer, Harvard Medical School – Department of Global Health and Social Medicine
(2025-2026)

Lecturer, Yale School of Public Health – Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology
(2020-present)

Course Creator, Soda Politics: How the Soft Drink Industry Influences Social Policy (Yale, 2022–2025)