Fineberg has held several prominent positions over the course of his career, including Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, Provost of Harvard University, and President of the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Fineberg is co-author of the books Clinical Decision Analysis, Innovators in Physician Education, and The Epidemic that Never Was, also published under the title The Swine Flu Affair, an analysis of the controversial federal immunization program against swine flu in 1976.

He has co-edited several books on such diverse topics as AIDS prevention, vaccine safety, and understanding risk in society.

At the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, he chaired and served on a number of panels dealing with health and science policy issues, including AIDS, vaccine safety, and reproducibility and replicability in scientific research.

Fineberg is married to Dr. Mary E. Wilson, a noted expert in infectious diseases, travel medicine, and global health and adjunct professor at Harvard School of Public Health and visiting professor at University of California, San Francisco.