Gregory Makoul, PhD, MS

Founder and CEO, PatientWisdom

Dr. Gregory Makoul is internationally recognized for expertise in physician-patient communication and shared decision-making as well as a radical common sense, person-centered approach to healthcare innovation. He is founder and CEO of PatientWisdom, executive-in-residence at AVIA, and founding director of the Connecticut Institute for Primary Care Innovation. He is also on faculty at the Yale School of Medicine and the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, following 15 years on faculty at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Makoul devoted six years to care transformation as senior vice president and chief innovation officer/chief academic officer at Saint Francis Care, an integrated delivery system based in Hartford, gaining real-world experience to complement his work in academic medicine. In 2018, he received the George Engel Award from the Academy on Communication in Healthcare (ACH) for outstanding research contributing to the theory, practice, and teaching of effective healthcare communication and related skills; he also received the Lynn Payer Award from ACH in 2003 for outstanding contributions to the literature, and was named a Learning Health System Research Pioneer by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The tools he developed for teaching and assessing communication skills – as well as his award-winning series of videos for bringing patient perspectives into healthcare – are used worldwide. Makoul earned a BA from Wesleyan, PhD in Communication Studies from Northwestern, and MS in Health Care Delivery Science from Dartmouth.

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