Michelle Morse

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT MICHELLE MORSE

Dr. Michelle Morse is the Chief Medical Officer for the New York City Department of Health, the oldest and largest municipal health department in the USA.Under her tenure, New York City achieved historic gains in life expectancy, reductions in overdose deaths, and investments that prioritize equitable health outcomes. In 2021, Dr. Morse joined the Health Department as the inaugural Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness. She launched the NYC Public Health Corps, a $100 million investment across more than 100 CBOs to partner with communities unfairly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During her tenure, she also established the Coalition to End Racism in Clinical Algorithms (CERCA), the City’s first ever Office of Healthcare Accountability and opened the first Neighborhood Stress-Free Zone in NYC to improve maternal health in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a neighborhood with the highest pregnancy-associated mortality rate in New York City. Dr. Morse has set a bold, ambitious goal to address chronic disease in New York City by deploying community health workers across the city by 2030. Previously, Dr. Morse served as the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Partners In Health. In 2013, she led the opening of a 300-bed teaching hospital and its first three residency programs in rural Haiti. In 2015 she helped establish the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. Inspired by her time in Haiti, she co-founded EqualHealth, an international organization dedicated to social medicine.Dr. Morse has authored more than 40 scientific articles across disciplines. Her recent work amplified mitigating medical debt as a public health issue and addressing racial health inequities in life expectancy across U.S. cities. Dr. Morse is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Harvard School of Public Health, and the University of Virginia. She completed an internal medicine residency at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dr. Morse was honored in New York Magazine’s Most Influential New Yorkers list, as a TIME100 Next honoree, and as CUNY’s 2025 Champion of Public Health. She currently practices medicine as a part-time hospitalist at Kings County Hospital. Dr. Morse serves on the boards of EqualHealth, and is the Board of Directors Vice-Chair of Partners In Health.