Shannon Brownlee is a nationally known writer and essayist whose book,Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer was named the best economics book of 2007 byNew York Times economics correspondent, David Leonhardt, and is being used by legislators and policy makers to craft health care reform legislation. A former senior editor atU.S. News & World Report, her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Glamour, More, Mother Jones, New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, Time, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the British medical journalBMJ. In 2008-2009 Ms. Brownlee served as a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health, and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Scholar. She is a recipient of the Association of Health Care Journalists Award for Excellence, the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She holds a Master of Science in marine sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

As a Senior Research Fellow in the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation, Ms. Brownlee writes and speaks about health care economics, the pharmaceutical industry, and medical innovation. Her personal website can be found at www.overtreated.com.