Barbara Butcher, M.P.H.

Barbara Butcher, M.P.H., is Chief of Staff and Director of the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. She is responsible for overall agency management, strategy, and inter-agency relations. She has directed Medicolegal Investigations, Disaster Planning, Fatality Management, WTC 9/11 Victim Recovery, and Identification, Evidence and Missing Persons. As Deputy Director she coordinated the remains recovery effort after WTC 9/11 and helped manage the response to the crash of Flight 587 that resulted in 265 deaths, and investigated the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.  In 2007 she consulted for the World Health Organization in Geneva, working with an international committee of experts to formulate policy and plans for mass casualty/fatality events. Following the 2004 Tsunami, she went to Thailand on behalf of W.H.O. to assist in Victim Identification strategies, and returned to speak on Fatality Management to an international audience convened by the United Nations and W.H.O.  In 2011 the Hong Kong government invited her and OCME colleagues to put on a symposium in disaster management for more than 300 officials.

As an investigator at OCME, she investigated more than 5500 death scenes and 680 homicides. She was the senior trainer for MDIs, and is now on faculty at NYU School of Medicine and New York Medical College. She lectures extensively at the New York City Police Department, government agencies and universities on death investigation, disaster planning, fatality management and identifications. She created and directs the Forensic Sciences Training Program at OCME, a National Institute of Justice-funded academy for national training on best practices in death investigation.  She is also a member of the Scientific Working Group for Medicolegal Death Investigation, a sub-committee of the White House Commission on Forensic Science.

Ms. Butcher holds a Masters degree in Public Health from Columbia University in New York and a Bachelors of Science from Long Island University. She obtained advanced skills through special training at the FBI Academy and NYPD, and is certified through the Department of Homeland Security in Incident Command, Mass Fatality Management, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Bioterrorism and Terrorist Bombing.