David Hemenway

David Hemenway (born 1945) is a professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He has a B.A. and Ph.D. (1974) from Harvard University, as well as an MA (1967) from University of Michigan, all in economics. He was James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont from 2005 to 2012 and 2020-2021 Elizabeth S. and Richard M. Cashin Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In 2012, he received the Centers for Disease Control's 20 for 20 Leadership Award in recognition of his status as one of the "twenty most influential injury and violence processionals over the past twenty years". Hemenway has written over 270 articles and seven books in the fields of economics and public health.

Research Hemenway began his research in the field of injury prevention in the 1960s, when he helped investigate product safety for Ralph Nader as one of "Nader's Raiders". Since then, he has become well known for studying gun violence and how it can be prevented.

Books His most recent book is While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention (2009). Private Guns, Public Health (2006) describes the public health approach to reducing firearm violence, and summarizes scientific research on firearms and health.

Prices and Choices (1993) is a collection of twenty-six of his essays applying microeconomic theory to everyday life. Monitoring and Compliance: the Political Economy of Inspection (1985) describes the importance of inspection processes in ensuring that regulations are followed, and the reasons the system often fails. Industry-wide Voluntary Product Standards (1975) describes the role of voluntary standards and standardization in the U.S. economy.

An early statistics article, Why Your Classes are Larger than Average, has been anthologized in various mathematical collections.