Scott Atlas


Scott W. Atlas is an American physician and health care policy expert. He is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Biography

Atlas received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and his MD from the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of Chicago. He currently serves as the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a conservative policy think tank. From 1998 to 2012, he was Professor and Chief of Neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.
Atlas served as a senior advisor for health care to Republican presidential campaigns in 2008, 2012, and 2016.
In policy, his most recent book is the second edition of Restoring Quality Health Care: A Six‐Point Plan for Comprehensive Reform at Lower Cost. He is also the author of In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care System ; review, Reforming America’s Health Care System, and Power to the Patient: Selected Health Care Issues and Policy Solutions.
In medicine, Atlas is the editor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and Spine, the leading reference textbook in its field since its publication, currently in its fifth edition and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin.
His work and interviews have appeared worldwide, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, CNN, BBC, Fox News, PBS News Hour, Istoé, Corriere della Sera, Diario La Nación, and The Hindu.

Contributions

In neuroradiology, Atlas is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the clinical applications of novel magnetic resonance imaging techniques in disorders of the brain and spine. He was one of the early researchers in advancing the field of MRI of the brain in neurologic disorders, having authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the field. He has been a visiting professor in dozens of academic institutions in the United States. Atlas was one of three neuroradiologists who constructed the original qualifying examination in neuroradiology in 1995. As a renowned educator in diagnostic imaging of the brain, Atlas has taught throughout the world as an invited speaker, including North America, Latin America, India, China, Southeast Asia, Russia, Australia, and Europe. He has formally trained more than one hundred neuroradiologists, many of whom are leading experts in the United States and in their home countries.
In health policy work at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Atlas has been a leading researcher in health care systems. Atlas's research interests are domestic and global health care policy, particularly the role of government and the free market in pricing, quality, access, and technology innovation. He has written extensively on the evidence about single payer health care compared with the health care system of the United States, and how to reform the United States’ health care system to improve access and quality particularly for lower-income groups using a competition-based system to reduce costs, rather than an expansion of government programs. Most recently, Atlas has been a prominent voice in discussing the scientific issues and policy impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has authored more than 170 policy essays.

Honors

In 2008, he received the Comeback Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an alumnus. He also received the 2011 Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has been awarded several honorary memberships in medical societies in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil, and served as honorary Visiting Professor in Neuroradiology from 2013-2016 at the University Hospital of Zürich. He is on the Advisory Board of the Clinical Neuroscience Center of the University Hospital of Zurich.

Selected works

Selected Journal Publications