Tony Back, MD

Dr. Anthony Back is Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. He was educated at Stanford University and Harvard Medical School, and did his postgraduate medical training at the University of Washington in Seattle and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

His research into patient-oncologist communication, funded by the National Cancer Institute and numerous other foundations, led to the founding of VitalTalk, a 501c3 with the mission of disseminating communication skill training to doctors and nurses who care for patients with a serious illness and their families. VitalTalk is one of the most successful non-profit startups in medical education and has trained more than 800 faculty who teach workshops that have reached more than 28,000 clinicians to date.

In 2018, Dr. Back turned his attention to psychedelic therapy, writing what remains the only first person account by a physician of a guided psychedelic experience to be published in a medical journal ("What Psilocybin Taught Me About Dying"). He conducted the first clinical trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for doctors and nurses with symptoms of depression and burnout associated with their frontline work in the COVID pandemic, funded by the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation and covered by NBC, National Public Radio, and Forbes. His second study in psychedelic medicine is a study of group psilocybin-assisted therapy for patients with metastatic cancer.