Graduated Harvard Medical School Class of 1979
Nancy Oriol, MD, was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended Boston University as an undergradute. She earned her MD degree from Harvard Medical School in 1979
From 1984 to 1997, Dr. Oriol was the director of obstetric anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She is known for developing the "walking epidural," an anesthetic technique which allows laboring women to move, as well as the NEO-VAC Meconium Suction Catheter for newborn resuscitation. She is associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. She is currently Faculty Associate Dean for Community Engagement in Medical Education.
Dr. Oriol is also founder and executive director of the Family Van, a public health outreach program that brings services from the hospital out into the community.
“To have a senior faculty say you all got in through the back door was extremely damaging”
“…in obstetrics, you have everybody, rich and poor, you know, one room next to each other, and everybody -- everyone’s doing the same thing, but you can see the world that comes with them.”
”…so that’s kind of where the Family Van came from… I figured if we went out there and checked people’s blood pressure and dip stick their urine and told them about WIC, that was half the job. Obviously, it was more than that, but that was where it started, it was sort of like how to get education and resources to the people who didn’t even know to ask for them.”
”…so when Joe Martin came here he was very interested in opening the school to the community. So I thought that was a beautiful thing, that he actually cared, he was the one who opened the doors to the community, supported all the community service stuff that was going on, and there was a moment where this was becoming much more community focused in a very nice way.”
”Well the number of minority students was also a line that was increasing but the number of minority senior faculty was decreasing. And so if you have -- if you look at women and you say, more women students, more women faculty. That makes sense. More minority students, less minority faculty.”
”And so it had sort of gone from affirmative action to let people in the front door at all, to caring about disparities and health outcome, like we ought to do something in the sense of social justice, do the right thing -- to the sense of, well we ought to do the right thing and do it well, until cultural competence.”