Dr. Hanna Saltzman is a writer, environmental advocate, and board-certified pediatrician in Salt Lake City. Her essays, flash nonfiction, and poetry can be found or forthcoming in River Teeth, The Sun, Terrain.org, JAMA, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and various others. Her essay “Halophilia,” about choosing to become a mother in the climate crisis, was selected for the Notable Essay list in Best American Essays 2024.

She grew up in Iowa City, Iowa and Salt Lake City, Utah. She graduated summa cum laude from Williams College with a degree in anthropology, during which she studied for one year at Oxford University. Prior to medical training, Dr. Saltzman worked in children’s environmental health advocacy. She also dabbled in health journalism and authored the health primer No White Coat Necessary: The Science of Everyday Health.

She attended medical school at the University of Michigan, graduating with the Academic Recognition Award and induction into Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Society, followed by pediatrics residency at the University of Utah, where she received the Service to Children advocacy award. She has co-authored numerous research papers in peer-reviewed journals in addition to her narrative and advocacy writing. She currently is a pediatric rheumatology fellow, where her research focuses on environmental health and nature-based health interventions for children with autoimmune diseases.

She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and child.