About Dr. Nate Link

Biosketch

Dr. Nate Link graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in 1983, completed his residency training in internal medicine at New York University/Bellevue Hospital in 1986, and then continued as practitioner, teacher, and physician leader at Bellevue ever since. In 1989, Dr. Link earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) Degree in Health Policy and Management at Columbia University School of Public Health while working full time as an NYU faculty member in the Bellevue Primary Care Clinic.

Over the next two decades at Bellevue Hospital, Dr. Link learned the principles of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and taught them to NYU medical students and internal medicine trainees while he maintained a medical practice. In 2001, Dr. Link joined colleagues Michael Tanner, MD, Lloyd Wasserman, MD, and Danielle Ofri, MD, to co-edit The Bellevue Guide to Outpatient Medicine, an evidence-based textbook that won the American Medical Writers Association award as Book of the Year for Physicians in 2001. Over a fifteen-year span, Dr. Link won four teaching awards for his curricular contributions in Evidence-Based Medicine.

In 2001, Dr. Link was named Chief of the Bellevue Medicine Service, a position that he held until 2012, at which time he was appointed Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for Bellevue Hospital. During his tenure as CMO, Dr. Link has helped lead the hospital through the harrowing Hurricane Sandy evacuation in 2012, the successful care of New York City’s only Ebola patient in 2014, and the COVID-19 surge in the Spring of 2020. These three events are highlighted in Dr. Link’s 2020 book: The Ailing Nation – Lessons from the Bedside for America’s Leaders.

In the many video essays of this website and in his award-winning book, “The Ailing Nation,” Dr. Nate Link introduces the essential principles of modern-day Medicine – the Just Culture and Evidence-Based decision-making – to the political world of national leadership. The impetus to do so is best captured in the video essay: Evidence-Based Politics – a Democratic Imperative.

The following whimsical poem, Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll, is featured in this video essay as well as The Ailing Nation. In this poem, the Jabberwock is the malevolent creature that terrorizes the enchanted world, and snickersnack is the swishing sound of triumph in his beheading by the brave knight. In the real world, the Jabberwock represents the dark forces that obscure the truth, the divisive influences that sow discord, and the system defects that confound our democracy. Snickersnack will be the resonant sound of our victory over these forces in the voting booth.

.