Madelon Lubin Finkel

Madelon Lubin Finkel is Professor of Healthcare Policy and Research and Director Office of Global Health Education at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. She holds a doctorate in epidemiology and health services research from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of New York University. In addition to her faculty appointment at Weill Cornell Medical College, Finkel was a Visiting Professor at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney (Australia) in 2004, and was a Visiting Professor at Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Medicine in Bangkok Thailand in 2016. In 2008, she was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist awarded by the Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The program promotes linkages between U.S. academics and professionals and their counterparts at universities abroad.

Finkel has been involved in epidemiological research and health care policy studies. Her pioneering work on second surgical opinion programs led to the widespread adoption and implementation of the second opinion benefit required by almost all insurance companies, corporations, and unions. She has published numerous articles in the area of health care cost management. Women's health issues have been the focus of past and present research projects. Finkel, in consultation with the New York City Board of Education, conducted many studies in the area of teenage pregnancy and childbearing. Her work led to the revision of the sexual education curriculum, which was implemented by the Board of Education in the early 1980s. Her work in the area of hormone replacement therapy focused on alternatives for women experiencing menopause. She is now working on a cervical cancer screening project in rural India, and is studying the health impact of hydraulic fracturing. Finkel's publications on unconventional gas extraction have been cited widely in the lay and professional press. Her article with Adam Law, "The Rush to Drill for Natural Gas: A Public Health Cautionary Tale",^[1] calls for epidemiologic studies to assess the potential for harm to human health. Finkel and Law wrote the seminal piece on the potential for harm to human health from unconventional gas development. Since that publication, she has written numerous pieces in the lay and professional press on the health impact of hydraulic fracturing.

Finkel has published widely on public health topics. Her ninth book, Understanding the Mammography Controversy: Science, Politics, and Breast Cancer Screening, focused on breast cancer screening. It was recommended by the reviewer for Lancet, although deemed not as good as a similar book by Gilbert Welch.^[2] Her 10th book, Truth, Lies, and Public Health: How We Are Affected when Science and Politics Collide, discusses in a series of essays the potentially toxic interaction of politics and science.^[3] She served as editor of a three-volume text on public health, Public Health in the 21st Century.

Finkel has been awarded the highest teaching honor at Weill Cornell Medical College, the Excellence in Teaching Award, four times. This honor is bestowed to those professors who are nominated and elected by students and the administration. She was named the Bruce Laine Ballard, MD Award for Excellence in Mentorship in 2012.

Finkel has served as consultant to numerous organizations, including law firms and pharmaceutical companies, in the areas of epidemiology and health care policy. She has been appointed by the Director General of the WHO to the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Evaluation. She is a member of the American College of Epidemiology, an advisor to the American Council on Science and Health, and Secretary of the Board of the Christian Medical College Vellore Foundation (USA). Finkel also serves as a Scientific Advisor and Board Member to Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE), a non-profit organization whose focus is to examine the empirical bases and assumptions of unconventional energy production as well as the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

Personal Life

Born Madelon Lubin and is the daughter of Ralph and Lorraine Lubin. She married David J. Finkel in 1973 ^[4] and divorced 21 years later. She married Arnold N. Lefkowitz in 1999. She has one daughter, Dr. Rebecca Finkel, and 3 step-daughters and twin grandchildren.

References

External links

• Madelon Lubin Finkel, Ph.D.
• Understanding the Mammography Controversy: Science, Politics, and Breast Cancer Screening (Westport, CT: Praeger Press. 2005)
• Truth, Lies, and Public Health: How We Are Affected when Science and Politics Collide (Westport, CT: Praeger Press. 2007)
• Public Health in the 21st Century (Westport, CT: Praeger Press. 2010)