Ann MacDonald has been a medical writer for more than 30 years. She is currently working as a freelance medical journalist while revising her memoir. Using her skills as a medical writer, Ann investigates her mother’s unexpected hospital death while exploring larger issues such as diagnostic uncertainty, power dynamics in hospitals, and efforts to improve patient safety.
Previously she held senior communications positions at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Before that, she worked as an editor at Harvard Health Publishing, the consumer health education division of Harvard Medical School. During that time, she wrote special health reports on various topics, launched the Harvard Annual Report on Prostate Diseases and spent four years as editor of the Harvard Mental Health Letter.
She also worked in content development at The Informed Medical Decisions Foundation (which has since merged with Healthwise). Earlier in her career, Ann worked as a writer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, and served for two years as eastern regional director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
She has written three books with doctors and contributed to a fourth. Her articles on health and medicine have appeared in The Boston Globe, STAT, Newsweek, and other publications.
Ann earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Brandeis University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She is also a graduate of the GrubStreet Memoir Incubator, a competitive MFA-level program.
She is a member of the Authors Guild, New England Science Writers, and the Association of Healthcare Journalists. She is on the board of the Gianna Cirella Memorial Fund, dedicated to improving sepsis awareness and care in Rhode Island.
Ann MacDonald 