Joel S. Weissman, PhD, is the deputy director and chief scientific officer of the Center for Surgery and Public Health and professor of surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Weissman received his PhD in health policy from the Pew Fellows Program at the Heller School, Brandeis. His research interests focus on vulnerable populations, quality of care, comparative effectiveness policy, academic-industry relationships in biomedical research, and health care reform. He has led numerous funded research projects in which he has studied the relation of patient safety to hospital crowding, the reporting and disclosure of medical errors to patients, access to clinical trials by uninsured participants, e-prescribing in Massachusetts, alternative scoring methods for pay-for-performance, and the evaluation of the Consumer’s Union Best Buy Drugs program. He published early work on access to care by the uninsured in his book, Falling Through the Safety Net: Insurance Status and Access to Care, with a forward by Hillary Rodham Clinton.