Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D.

Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who co-founded the field of narrative medicine with Columbia University humanities scholars and clinicians . She is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities & Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She co-chairs the Division of Narrative Medicine with a circle of directors and associate directors who have helped to found and grow narrative medicine at Columbia. 

She completed the MD at Harvard in 1978 and the PhD in English at Columbia in 1999, concentrating on narrative theory and the works of Henry James. Her research focuses on the consequences of narrative medicine practice, narrative’s contributions to social justice and equity in health care, narrative medicine pedagogy, and creative and humanities interventions in clinical work.   Narrative Medicine has become an ingredient in clinical education and a conceptual beacon in the study and practice of health care disciplines throughout the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) campus in upper Manhattan. Dr. Charon collaboratively directs multiple training programs directed toward faculty, trainees, and students of the health professions schools. As Section Director of Narrative Medicine in the medical school and founder and current director of Columbia Commons IPE (Interprofessional Education), she has wide opportunities to engage faculty, trainees, and students in developing narrative and interprofessional practices in ten health professions training programs at Columbia. 

Dr. Charon inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia and helped to launch the Certification of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine. Narrative Medicine International brings together narrative medicine practitioners throughout the globe, and the Narrative Medicine Alumnx Exchange sponsors intellectual and clinical collaborative research and scholarship among graduates of our training programs.. 

She consults with universities and health centers globally to build narrative medicine education and practice with endowed lectures, keynote presentations at international academic conferences, and has received honorary degrees and affiliated faculty positions at several  universities worldwide. She spearheads research to study the consequence of narrative interventions in health care with funding from the NIH, NEH, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and others. Her recent publications appear in clinical journals, literary journals, and anthologies. She was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Dr. Charon has published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Narrative, Henry James Review, Poetics Today, and others.