Renee N Salas, MD, MPH, MS

Dr. Renee N. Salas is the Founding Director of The Cooperative at Mass General Brigham which is building an all-of-healthcare approach to strengthen patient resilience and outcomes in a changing environment. Dr. Salas is an emergency medicine physician at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School and holds a variety of affiliations across Harvard University.

She leads the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change U.S. Working Group in partnership with the American Public Health Association, which she founded in 2018 and includes over 80 U.S. organizations, and is a member of the global Lancet Countdown. Dr. Salas served as the Co-Director of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Group’s Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice Initiative and as a guest editor for NEJM Group’s “Fossil-fuel Pollution and Climate Change” series. Dr. Salas was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for her work in climate change and health and served as the Climate Change Interest Group Chair and a member of Steering Committee for the Grand Challenge on Climate Change, Health, and Equity. She serves on both the Advisory Committee for The National Academies Climate Crossroads initiative and the Steering Committee for the Action Collaborative on Achieving a Climate Resilience and Sustainable Health Sector. She has won various awards for her work, speaks at high-level engagements across diverse sectors – including testifying before Congress – and engages in research to explore how climate change is impacting the healthcare system.

Her work and expertise are regularly featured in mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, NPR, Time, and the Associated Press. She received her Doctor of Medicine from the innovative five-year medical school program to train physician-investigators at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine with a Master of Science in Clinical Research from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Her Master of Public Health is from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with a concentration in environmental health.

Education & Training

• Residency: University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Emergency Medicine, 2013
• Medical Education: Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, 2009

Board Certifications

• Emergency Medicine, American Board of Emergency Medicine

Languages Spoken

• English

Age Group Treated

• Adults