Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese MD, a CASBS faculty fellow since 2017-18, is a clinician and heads the Stanford Presence Center, which focuses on the human connection in medicine. Housed within the Stanford School of Medicine, Presence seeks to add the social science dimensions to a multidisciplinary focus on balancing high touch and high tech for the equitable and inclusive experience of medicine. Their research aims include: understanding the human experience of patients, physicians and caregivers and how it relates to medical error and outcomes; and how to leverage technology for the human experience of medicine. Past fruitful collaborations with CASBS fellows have utilized insights from sociology, psychology, political science, organizational economics, and other disciplines to further projects at Presence. Verghese’s non-medical writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, the Atlantic, and other venues. His novel Cutting for Stone (Knopf, 2009) spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His latest novel, The Covenant of Water (Grove Atlantic, 2023) debuted on the New York Times list at #4.

At Stanford’s School of Medicine, Verghese is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and the Vice Chair for Humanism in the department of medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and pulmonary medicine. He is the recipient of several honorary degrees, an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and the American Association of Arts & Sciences. In September 2016, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Obama.