Thomas Tsai, MD, MPH

I am an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. I engage in multidisciplianry research across the fields of health policy, public health, and data science. I am a faculty associate of the Center for Surgery and Public Health, Ariadne Labs, the Harvard Global Health Institute, and the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics.

As a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, my clinical interests are in minimally invasive surgery for GERD and other benign gastrosophageal disorders; metabolic and bariatric surgery; and complex abdominal wall reconstruction. 

My research focuses on understanding the impact of health policy efforts on achieving value in our healthcare system by reducing spending and improving outcomes. As Co-Director of the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab (HqO) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, I lead a portfolio of projects that bridges clinical medicine, health policy, and public health through three key portfolios: healthcare quality and equity; health policy evalation; and health system resilience. Coming out of the COVID-19 Pandemic, life expectancy in the US has decreased by 3 years, and our research team is evaluating health policy and developing clinical care models that deliver better health outcomes.

From 2014-2015, I served as a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in the Office of Health Policy at the US Department of Health and Human Services. From 2022 to 2023, I served as Senior Policy Advisort for the COVID-19 Response in the Biden Administration and the Testing and Treatment Coordinator on the White House COVID-19 Response team where I led the efforts to bring the country out of the public health emergency by increasing equitable and widescale acess to diagnostics and treatments.