Portrait of Dr. David Hemenway

David Hemenway is a Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Hemenway is a co-investigator on the CHOICES project. This project is focused on understanding and modeling the cost-effectiveness of interventions that can improve children’s nutrition and physical activity and reduce the prevalence of obesity, which includes modeling work, evidence reviews, and simulation modeling of the cost-effectiveness of a wide variety of interventions, from restaurant calorie menu labeling to sugar sweetened beverage excise taxes. Results from this work should begin to provide researchers and policymakers with both methods and data to use in deciding on the “best value for money” in interventions to reduce obesity prevalence in children and adults in the United States.

Dr. Hemenway has written widely on injury prevention, including articles on firearms, violence, suicide, child abuse, motor vehicle crashes, fires, falls and fractures.  He headed the pilot for the National Violent Death Reporting System, which provides detailed and comparable information on suicide and homicide. In 2012 he was recognized by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as one of the “twenty most influential injury and violence professionals over the past twenty years.”

Dr. Hemenway holds a BA and a PhD from Harvard University. He teaches classes on injury and on economics. At the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, he has won ten teaching awards as well as the inaugural community engagement award.