Cheri Blauwet, MD is an Associate Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, the Chief Medical Officer of Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, and the Distinguished Chair in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Blauwet is also a former Paralympic athlete in the sport of wheelchair racing, competing for the United States Team in three Paralympic Games (Sydney ’00, Athens ’04, Beijing ’08) and bringing home a total of seven Paralympic medals. She is also a two-time winner of both the Boston and New York City Marathons.
Translating her background as an athlete to the clinical setting, Dr. Blauwet is a change agent in the area of health equity, with a specific focus on sport and physical activity for health promotion and chronic disease prevention. She is deeply committed to ensuring that opportunities for achieving optimal health are equitable and universally accessible to all, including marginalized populations. Her scientific research is focused on injury and illness prevention, with particular focus on athlete mental health, concussion, and the unique needs of the female athlete as well as athletes with disabilities. As evidence of the impact of this work, since joining the Harvard faculty she has been invited to provide 58 national and 29 international lectures on these topics, including multiple keynotes and plenary sessions at major sports medicine and rehabilitation conferences. She has published 96 peer reviewed papers in distinguished academic journals. In 2021, she was appointed to the National Advisory Board for Medical Rehabilitation Research under the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
She serves as a Member of the International Paralympic Committee’s Medical Committee, the International Olympic Committee Medical & Scientific Commission, and serves on the Board of Directors for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC). She additionally serves as Chair of the Board for the Boston Athletic Association (Boston Marathon). In 2016, she was the recipient of the Harvard Medical School Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award and was named one Boston’s “Ten Outstanding Young Leaders” by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. In 2019 she was named by the Boston Business Journal as one of the “40 under 40” community leaders.