N. Stuart Harris

N. Stuart Harris is the founder and Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Division of Wilderness Medicine, and the founding Director of the MGH Wilderness Medicine Fellowship. He is the founding Chief of MGH SPEAR (Space, Ecological, Arctic, and Resource-limited) Med. He is the founding Director of the MGH/Boston sites of the MGH-Baylor Space Medicine Fellowship. He is a full-time attending physician in the MGH Emergency Department and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is Faculty Affiliate of the Arctic Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. 

Harris' Arctic work experience extends from the Gulf of Alaska (commercial fisherman) to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta tundra and Cherski, Siberia (NSF-funded field medical support for Woodwell Climate Research Center), to the summit of Denali (mountaineer/physician with the National Park Service) to community care in remote Alaska Native communities (Kotzebue). Working with colleagues in Kotzebue, Alaska, he helped found Siamit to learn from and contribute expertise to community care in remote Alaska Native communities. 

Harris’s research focuses on investigating the pathogenesis and treatment of acute hypoxia/high altitude illness, advancing medical expertise into remote and underserved areas, on the interplay between ecological forces and human health, and the impact of climate change as a healthcare emergency. His high-altitude research has spanned from the Everest region, to Denali, Kilimanjaro, Japan, and North America. Along with MGH Wilderness Medicine Fellowship graduate, Dr. Tracy Farkas Cushing, he served as Associate Editor of Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine (7th Edition).To teach a new generation the concepts and vocabulary of an ecological view of health, since 2005 he is Co-Director and faculty of the NOLS “Medicine in the Wild” course for senior medical students, most often in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. He is Chair of the NOLS Board of Trustees.

Harris is father of Walker, Emma, and Elizabeth and husband to Malinda Polk. A key quality of life metric is “Did I get on my mountain bike for a ride today (tonight) in the Blue Hills?”