J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD

J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD is the Director of Education in the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Wes graduated with a BA cum laude from Yale in philosophy. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received an MA in philosophy, a PhD in religion and culture, and a medical degree. Following graduate school and medical school, he completed a residency in psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital/HMS and completed a Fellowship in Medical Ethics at HMS. His areas of interest include social justice, access to care, human rights, asylum and immigration, humanistic aspects of medicine, physician health and well-being, and substance use.

Wes has been a member of the faculty in the Center for Bioethics since its inception. In the Master of Science in Bioethics program, Wes helped create and taught in "Bioethics Advocacy," "Health and Human Rights," and "Critical Reading of Contemporary Books in Bioethics." As Director of Education in the Center, Wes has oversight of the Master of Science in Bioethics, the Fellowship in Bioethics, the public educational offerings of the Center, as well as oversight of the Medical Ethics and Professionalism sequence for Harvard medical and dental students. In addition to the medical school, Wes has taught in Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Extension School.

Prior to becoming Director of Education in the Center, Wes held a longtime appointment in psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance and co-founded the Human Rights and Asylum Clinic there in 2010. From 2020 until 2024, Wes served as a professor of medical ethics and psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), where he taught "Introduction to Health Policy," which was the most popular elective at BCM.

Wes has won teaching awards from Harvard and other educational institutions as well as the American Psychiatric Association. His writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, Newsweek, Psychology Today, Scientific American, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the Lancet, American Journal of Bioethics, NBC News, STAT News, Vice, Salon, Slate, and numerous other outlets. His work has been covered extensively by multiple media outlets, including NPR, CNN, US News and World Report, Time, the Boston Globe, CBS, the Wall Street Journal, the British Medical Journal, USA Today, ABC News, Kaiser Health News, Hasan Minaj's Patriot Act, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and numerous other major outlets. His book, Almost Addicted, which was published in 2012 by Hazelden Press, won the Will Solimene Award by the New England chapter of the American Medical Writers' Association.