Betsy MacGregor biography

Dr. Betsy MacGregor has a BA from Wellesley College, a Masters of Science in Neurobiology from New York University Graduate School, and an MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. For twenty years she was a senior staff pediatrician and Director of Adolescent Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center, a major academic medical center in New York City. There she also founded and directed the Pediatric Pain Management Program and the hospital-wide Program for Humanistic and Complementary Health Care. In addition, as a George Soros Faculty Scholar with the Open Society Institute’s Project on Death in America, she designed and directed a three-year research project entitled Dying and the Inner Life, aimed at learning from people with terminal illness about what it means to face the reality of one’s own dying.

Dr. MacGregor has conducted numerous educational programs on patient-centered care for health care professionals around issues of psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of health and healing and has spoken widely about them to the general public. Now retired from medical practice, she lives with her husband, Charles Terry, on Whidbey Island where she is a writer, a speaker, and a founding Board Member of Enso House, a local hospice-home that provides compassionate, holistic care for terminally ill patients and their families. She is also a staff member for the Bravewell Fellows Integrative Medicine Program and has served as an integrative medicine advisor with the Bravewell Collaborative, a working group of philanthropists and health care leaders dedicated to bringing the principles and practices of integrative medicine into mainstream health care and medical education.