Amber Barnato, MD, MPH, MS

Amber E. Barnato is the Director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. She is a physician health services researcher with dual clinical training in preventive medicine and public health and in hospice and palliative medicine. Her research focuses on variation in end-of-life intensive care unit (ICU) and life-sustaining treatment use.

Barnato's research is the source of the frequently cited statistic that “one in five Americans will die with ICU services” and the key finding that Black patients’ higher use of intensive care at the end of life is largely attributable to their use of higher-intensity hospitals. Her work has focused both on refining measures of hospital end-of-life treatment intensity and exploring the mechanisms underlying variations in these measures using mixed qualitative and quantitative approaches, including participant observation, simulation, and mental-models interviewing. This research has led to a conceptual model regarding the interplay among provider social norms, patient and family expectations, and physician decision making heuristics, which she summarized in an invited overview in Health Affairs.

More recently she has begun developing and testing interventions to modify patient and provider behavior related to advance care planning and end-of-life decision-making using behavioral decision theory with the goal of better aligning patient values with medical decisions and reducing the burden of surrogate decision making. Visit the Apple store to download her most recent video game intervention, Hopewell Hospitalist, and try your hand at solving the mystery of Andy’s grandfather’s disappearance while also changing the way you think about advance care planning.

In 2021, Barnato was appointed as the Director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI) and named the John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Clinical Practice. Under her leadership, TDI will deepen its focus on equity in healthcare delivery and advancing an organizational culture that values diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.  She was previously the inaugural Susan J. and Richard M. Levy 1960 Distinguished Professor in Health Care Delivery at TDI. Before that, she was associate professor of medicine, clinical and translational science, and health policy and management, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health. Throughout her career she has published more than 170 research articles, advised more than 60 medical students committed to clinical research careers, and mentored eight faculty through their transition to independence.

Barnato earned a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, an MD from Harvard Medical School, an MPH from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MS from Stanford University.

View the Barnato Lab website

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