Jerry Avorn' (born February 13, 1948) is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief Emeritus of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
He founded one of the largest programs using health care utilization data to track medication use and outcomes, and invented the practice of "academic detailing" in which pharmacists, nurses, and physicians educate doctors about cost-effective prescribing practices using the same tactics that drug companies employ to market their products.
The practice has been taken up by several hospitals and governments, such as Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, Kentucky, Australia, Israel, and Nova Scotia.
In 2004, he founded Alosa Health, a nonprofit organization that develops and implements academic detailing programs to improve prescribing.
[citation needed] In 2006 he testified as a plaintiff’s expert witness in the Vioxx litigation, but he donated all profit from his involvement to charitable causes.