Meet the Dean

A Renowned Physician Scientist, Scholar, and Medical Educator

Prior to joining CUNY Medicine, Dr. Green was a tenured Professor of Anesthesiology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Health Management & Policy at the University of Michigan’s Medical School and School of Public Health, and an attending physician at the Back and Pain Center. She holds faculty appointments at the Institute for Social Research and Institute for Health Policy and Innovation, and is a faculty associate in the Program for Research on Black Americans, Depression Center. Dean Green is an award-winning academic physician who is an elected fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, Gerontological Society of America, and Association of University Anesthesiologists. She was the inaugural Associate Vice President and Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS), Executive Director of the Healthier Black Elders Center and Co-Director of the Community Core for the NEH/NIA-funded Research Center in Minority Aging Research (RCMAR), Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research. Dr. Green was the Founding Chair for the American Pain Society’s Special Interest Group on Pain and Disparities and chair of the Public Policy Committee. She is Professor Emerita in Anesthesiology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the U-M School of Medicine.

Dr. Green received her undergraduate degree from University of Michigan-Flint and her MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine where she was also inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AΩA) Medical Honor Society. Dr. Green completed an Anesthesiology residency, subspecialty training in Ambulatory and Obstetrical Anesthesia, and a Pain Medicine fellowship at UMHS as well as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging Butler-Williams Scholar program, van Hedwig Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) fellowship, and Mayday Pain & Society fellowship. Dean Green was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) of the National Academies where she also worked in the U.S. Senate Children and Families subcommittee (Sen. Christopher Dodd, Chair) within Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (Sen. Edward (Ted) Kennedy, Chair), she helped draft the National Pain Care Policy Act, as incorporated in the Affordable Care Act, and was thanked in the Congressional Record by Sen. Kennedy for contributions to the FDA reauthorization, i.e. including relevant participant characteristics for outcome analysis.

She is the author of germinal and seminal papers that poignantly reveal unequal treatment, disparities, variability in decision-making, and diminished healthcare quality revealing suboptimal access to health and pain care across the life course for women, minorities, and low-income people. An innovator, she often uses narrative medicine and photovoice techniques to promote empathy and healing, an approach she brought to CUNY School of Medicine’s Pre-Matriculation Program. Dr. Green published a selective review focusing on the unequal burden of pain in Pain Medicine, which remains the most cited article in the journal’s history, and served as guest editor for its special issue focused on disparities in pain care. She was the first to identify hospital security failures and has written and spoken frequently about the genesis of social inequities in pain care.

Honors, Recognitions, and a Lifetime of Service

Dr. Green has received numerous honors including UMHS Employee of the Year, U-M Woman of Color of the Year for Human Relations, Consumer Checkbook’s Top 100 Doctors, Top 1% of Pain Doctors by U.S. News and World Report, Who’s Who in America, U-M Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, John Liebeskind Pain Management Research Award, Elizabeth Narcessian Award for Outstanding Educational Achievements, and MSU CHM Distinguished Alumni Award.

In 2022, she was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 Impact list. Her board service includes NAM’s Health Care Services Board, Michigan Governor’s Pain and Symptom Advisory Committee, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee and HHS Oversight Committee for the National Pain Strategy (Disparities Committee Co-Chair) as well as NIH’s Advisory Committee for the Eunice Shriver National Institute of Child and Human Development, Advisory Committee for Research on Women’s Health, and National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, and Associated Medical Schools of New York Executive Board (Vice Chair). Dr. Green has made invited presentations across the globe including the U.S. Congress and Rockefeller Center (Bellagio, Italy). She has worked consistently to strengthen participation and advancement in academic medicine, the biomedical sciences, and higher education, with particular attention to populations historically excluded from these fields. Her former students now lead, teach, and mentor others. Most recently, Dr. Green has been recognized by Forbes, City & State NY, amNY, and PoliticsNY for her leadership at CUNY School of Medicine.

An avid swimmer and genealogist, Dr. Green enjoys travel, photography, college football, creative writing, and time with family and friends. Dr. Green also enjoys the arts, attending operas and recitals, and appeared as the Narrator and Lincoln in Aaron Copeland’s Lincoln’s Portrait with the U-M Life Sciences Orchestra at the historic Hill Auditorium (Ann Arbor).