Neal Baer

Neal Baer, MD, is an award-winning showrunner, television writer/producer, physician, author, and public health advocate.

Baer recently served as executive producer and showrunner of the third season of Designated Survivor. He previously served as executive producer and showrunner for Under the Dome; A Gifted Man; and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2000–2011), for which he oversaw all aspects of writing and production. 

Prior to his work on SVU, Baer was executive producer of the Peabody and Emmy Award–winning series ER. A member of the show’s original staff and a writer and producer on the series for seven seasons, he received Emmy and Writers Guild of America nominations as a producer and writer. Baer is an executive producer of the new documentary film Welcome to Chechnya, which won a Special Jury Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Baer’s first novel, Kill Switch, co-written with Jonathan Greene, was published in 2012, and the sequel, Kill Again, was published in 2015. Baer also produced the award-winning documentary short Home Is Where You Find It.

Baer is a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. Previously, he was clinical professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and an adjunct professor in the Department of Community Health at UCLA, where he established the Global Media Center for Social Impact using new media to promote global health. Baer is also a senior fellow at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism and is a member of the editorial board of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.

Baer received the Valentine Davies Award in 2004 from the Writers Guild of America for “public service efforts in both the entertainment industry and the community at large, bringing dignity to and raising the standard for writers everywhere.” He has received the Special Individual Achievement Award from the Media Project; the Leadership Award from NOFAS; the Loop Award from Lupus LA for educating the public about lupus and autoimmune diseases; the Socially Responsible Medicine Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility for “accomplishment in crafting compelling health messages;” and the Feminist Majority Foundation Award for promoting global women’s rights on television.