Dr. Michelle Morse is the Interim Commissioner of Health at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC Health). She is also the inaugural Chief Medical Officer and Executive Deputy Commissioner at NYC Health, where she leads the agency’s work in bridging public health and health care to reduce health inequities, guiding the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness’s place-based and cross-cutting health equity programs and serving as a key liaison to clinicians and clinical leaders across New York City. She previously served as the Deputy Commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness.

Dr. Morse is an internal medicine and public health doctor who works to achieve health equity through global solidarity, social medicine and anti-racism education, and activism. She is a general internal medicine physician, part-time hospitalist at Kings County Hospital, Co-Founder of EqualHealth, and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Morse’s continued commitment to advancing health equity and justice is informed by her experience in leadership roles as Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Heath, as a Soros Equality Fellow launching a global Campaign Against Racism and as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow with the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2024, Dr. Morse was named a TIME100Next honoree.