Dr. Nancy Oriol is Faculty Associate Dean for Community Engagement in Medical Education at Harvard Medical School. She integrates service-learning into the curriculum by working with students, faculty, and local communities, creating courses and advising student projects that bridge clinical education with real-world impact. Her community-based work began over 30 years ago when, in partnership with Boston neighborhoods, she founded The Family Van, a mobile health clinic addressing health disparities through outreach, education, and care. This innovative model continues today, nationally replicated and supported by a research collaborative, Mobile Health Map, an interactive platform that helps mobile clinics measure and improve their impact.

She l received her MD from Harvard Medical School, followed by residency training in Anesthesia and Critical Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where she became Director of the Division of Obstetric Anesthesia. Her clinical and research accomplishments include pioneering the “walking epidural” to relieve labor pain while allowing mobility; inventing the NEO-VAC Meconium Suction Catheter for newborn resuscitation; and developing a fetal data processing system to assess fetal well-being during labor. She has also studied the effects of maternal cocaine use on fetal outcomes. From 1997 to 2016, as Dean for Students at HMS, Dr. Oriol introduced mannequin simulation into the preclinical curriculum and founded HMS MEDscience, a unique high school biology course that today inspires over 4000 students a year to think like a scientist.