If you’re looking for a modern-day role model of a physician-scientist, Dr. Jeremy Faust, MD, MS, MA, is a great place to start.
Faust’s professional portfolio checks off a lot of boxes. He’s an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today (a trusted online source for clinical news across medical specialties), COVID-19 researcher, public health policy wonk, author, and leading science communicator.
It’s the latter role that separates Faust from many of his peers. He spent a good deal of time talking about the importance of health and science communication during a recent visit to Yale as an invited guest of the university’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism program. The March 26 event was sponsored by the Yale School of Public Health and included a lecture by Faust titled “Scholarship, Media, and the Modern Academic Career."
Faust opened the lecture by emphasizing that scholarship and media communication should not be viewed as competing priorities, but rather as complementary tools for maximizing impact. In public health especially, he said, the goal is not simply to generate knowledge but to ensure it reaches and informs the public.
"You don't want to be alone in the wilderness," Faust said. "We want to be seeding ideas, drawing from the ecosystem, and giving back."
Faust described his career as multifaceted — an increasingly necessary approach in a world where physicians, scholars, and communicators must navigate growing skepticism toward science and medicine. In addition to his research and scholarship, Faust is author of Inside Medicine newsletter. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Scientific American. He also is a frequent expert guest on national media shows.
Faust traced his interest in writing back to his medical residency when he contributed to a professional emergency medicine publication. He later expanded into more public-facing work through dozens of essays for outlets such as Slate. Through this process, he developed his voice while using writing as a tool for learning. He frequently engaged with experts across disciplines — an approach that reinforced, for him, the importance of balancing research, communication, and policy engagement.
The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point in Faust’s career. In response to the rapidly evolving scientific landscape, Faust co-created Brief 19, a daily newsletter synthesizing COVID-19 research and policy developments. Produced over 16 months with dozens of collaborators, the project helped Faust identify gaps in emerging data and shaped his research interests. His work on excess mortality during the pandemic — analyzing all-cause mortality data and later collaborating with Yale researchers to develop more rigorous surveillance methods — contributed to a broader body of research examining the pandemic's impact.
Throughout his lecture, Faust emphasized that producing high-quality research is only one part of the equation. Equally important, he said, is ensuring that findings are communicated effectively to the public, policymakers, and other stakeholders. His comments resonated well with his Yale audience. At the Yale School of Public Health, linking science and society is the foundational principle of the school’s core strategic plan.
Interacting with media is one way public health experts can deliver important evidence-based information to the public to help them make informed decisions about their health care.
"There's a ton of data that shows that things that are covered by media [have] … higher impact," Faust said, referencing metrics such as citations and broader public engagement.
He encouraged the Yale students, faculty, and staff in the audience to think proactively about how their research and scholarship will be received, including building relationships with journalists and preparing clear narratives about their findings. Media engagement, he argued, should be seen as a legitimate and necessary component of modern scholarship rather than an optional add-on.
In a conversation with Yale School of Public Health Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH, FACEP, following his lecture, Faust addressed the challenges of communicating complex science to a public audience. He discussed the tension that can arise between nuance and clarity and the importance of developing concise messaging that still allows room for uncertainty.
Faust cautioned against prioritizing attention over accuracy. While acknowledging that public visibility can amplify impact, he stressed that credibility must remain central when discussing science and medical research.
"It's okay to be ambitious if you're doing it in service of something greater than your own ego," he said. “If you’re doing it to actually inform the public or to change policy, then it’s fantastic.”
He encouraged early-career scholars to remain grounded in their expertise, to collaborate with more experienced colleagues when stepping outside their primary field, and to develop habits of careful self-evaluation. He also spoke candidly about rejection, describing it as a routine part of both academic publishing and public writing. He encouraged attendees to view rejection as an opportunity for growth rather than a setback.
The discussion concluded with Faust reflecting on the importance of inviting the public into the scientific process. Citing the idea of writing as both a "closed door" for oneself and an "open door" for others, he encouraged attendees to share their work more broadly and thoughtfully.