Freda Lewis-Hall serves as Pfizer’s Chief Medical Officer leads Pfizer Medical, the division responsible for the safe, effective and appropriate use of Pfizer medicines and vaccines around the world. Besides providing science-grounded medical information to prescribers and patients, Pfizer Medical is also responsible for the company’s office of global patient affairs, its centers of excellence on pediatric care, clinical trial diversity and healthy aging, its enterprise benefit-risk communications, its worldwide compassionate access program as well as driving innovative public-private partnerships.
Before joining Pfizer in 2009, Dr. Lewis-Hall held senior leadership positions in medical affairs and product development with Vertex, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pharmacia and Eli Lilly and Company. Prior to joining the biopharmaceutical industry, she served as Vice Chairperson and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Howard University College of Medicine and was an advisor to the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Lewis-Hall graduated from Johns Hopkins University and earned her medical doctorate at Howard University College of Medicine. She launched her medical career as a practicing physician and then focused her academic research on the effects of health care disparities and the impact of mental illness on families and communities.
Dr. Lewis-Hall is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the New York Academy of Medicine She is a frequent speaker on issues such as improving patient safety and outcomes and reducing stigma and healthcare disparities. She appears regularly on health-related television programs in major global markets and shares health and medical information through GetHealthyStayHealthy.com.
Dr. Lewis-Hall currently serves on the boards of SpringWorks Therapeutics, Save the Children, Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard Medical School and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. She is a director of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a member of the Advisory Council for the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Science.