Harold C. Sox, MD, MACP
Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine
Opening Ceremony Speaker
Harold C. Sox, MD, MACP, is Editor of Annals of Internal Medicine, the flagship peer-reviewed clinical journal published twice monthly by the American College of Physicians (ACP). He became editor in July 2001. Annals of Internal Medicine and ACP are headquartered in Philadelphia.
A general internist, Dr. Sox has also been a leader of internal medicine nationally and of ACP in particular. He served as 1998-1999 President of the American College of Physicians, during the organization's merger with the American Society of Internal Medicine.
Dr. Sox is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and chairs its committee to advise Congress and the DHHS Secretary on priorities for clinical effectiveness research. He has led other national committees that have shaped clinical, educational, and public policy in the United States. He chaired the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the IOM Committee to Study HIV Transmission Through Blood Products, and the IOM Committee on Health Effects of Exposures in the Persian Gulf War.
In his lifetime of research and writing, Dr. Sox has explored issues such as technology assessment, medical decision-making, disease prevention and health promotion, cost effectiveness analysis, physicians' and patients' risk preferences, and medical education.
He is the author of ten books and many book chapters and journal articles. He is editor of “Landmark Papers in Internal Medicine: The First 80 Years of Annals of Internal Medicine,” now in press. Dr. Sox is the principal author of “Medical Decision Making,” an introductory textbook used throughout the world. He was editor of the first and second editions of “Common Diagnostic Tests,” a groundbreaking evaluation of medical tests first published by the American College of Physicians in 1987.
Dr. Sox was an associate editor of Scientific American Medicine and has served on the editorial boards of three medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine. He also served as consulting associate editor of The American Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Sox received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1966. After serving as a medical intern and resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, he spent two years doing research in immunology at the National Institutes of Health and three years at Dartmouth Medical School. There he served as chief medical resident and began his studies of medical decision-making. Sox then spent fifteen years on the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine, where he served as chief of the division of general internal medicine and as a director of ambulatory care at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center. In 1988, Dr. Sox returned to Dartmouth to chair the department of medicine. He was the Joseph M. Huber Professor of Medicine and chair of the department of medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center until 2001, when he became Editor of Annals of Internal Medicine.
