David Hemenway

David Hemenway (born 1945) is a Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has a B.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1974) from Harvard University in economics. He is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. He is also currently a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont. Hemenway has written over 130 articles and five 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.