Dr. Eve Higginbotham is the inaugural Vice Dean for Inclusion and Diversity of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a position she assumed on August 1, 2013. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics and Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) since 2000 and has served one term as an elected member of the NAM Council, upon which she chairs the Finance Committee. She has also served on NASEM consensus committees, the NAM Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity, and she has reviewed a number of consensus reports. She currently serves as chair of a consensus committee investigating the impact of COVID-19 on the careers of academic women in STEMM. Dr. Higginbotham is a member of the Governing Board of the National Research Council and represents the NAM on the NAS Investment Committee. She brings broad governance experience to the Council including serving as a Past President of the AΩA Honor Medical Society and previous membership on the Harvard Board of Overseers and the MIT Corporation.
A graduate of MIT, with S.B. and S.M. degrees in chemical engineering, and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Higginbotham completed her residency in ophthalmology at LSU and fellowship training at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. In 2020, she completed a Master of Law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Dr. Higginbotham currently serves on the Board of Directors of Ascension, a member of the Executive and Audit Committees, and she chairs the Quality Committee for the system. Ascension is the second largest private health system in the United States, with hospitals and clinical sites in 20 states. Moreover, she is a former member of the Board of the AΩA Honor Medical Society. She continues to lead the Leadership Development Committee and is a member of the Audit Committee. Representing the Perelman School of Medicine, she also serves on the Board of the National Clinical Scholars Program, a program that fosters the careers of physicians and nurses with an emphasis on health services research and policy. Dr. Higginbotham also serves as an Associate Editor on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Ophthalmology. She is a Vice Chair of the NEI-supported Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study, a randomized clinical trial, which was funded for a 20-year follow-up study of this unique cohort of patients. She is currently a member of the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Glaucoma Society, American Clinical and Climatological Association, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Advisory Board, and the Visiting Committees of the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science and Undergraduate and Graduate Education at MIT.
Dr. Higginbotham is a former chair of the FDA Ophthalmic Devices Panel and continues to serve. She is also a former member of the Defense Health Board, a Federal Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Defense. As a member of this Federal Advisory Board, she led the review of the Deployment Health Centers in 2017 and was a member of the subcommittees that produced the following reports: Pediatric Health Care Services Report, Sustainment and Advancement of Amputee Care, Implications of Trends in Obesity and Overweight for the DOD – Fit to Fight, Fit for Life. She is the past president of the following organizations: the Maryland Society Eye Physicians, the Baltimore City Medical Society, and the Harvard Medical School Alumni Council. She formerly chaired her section of the National Academy of Medicine and is a former member of the NAM membership committee.
Dr. Higginbotham, a practicing glaucoma specialist, continues to remain active in scholarship related to glaucoma, ocular pharmacology, health policy, health equity, STEM, patient care delivery, and organizational culture.