It was with great pleasure that I joined the Macy Foundation as special advisor to the president in January, 2011. I have had a long and varied career in health care that I hope to leverage on Macy’s behalf. My experience has included in-hospital specialty practice in infectious diseases, ambulatory practice as a primary care general internist at Harvard Community Health Plan, epidemiologic research in infectious diseases and obstetrics, teaching, management in HMO and foundation settings, and grant-making. After 11 years at the Commonwealth Fund, where I focused on health care quality improvement and policy issues, I’m eager to return to medical education, including educational innovations and improvements.
I am particularly interested in Macy’s efforts to foster inter-professional education, including using technologies such as simulation to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of team-based care and training. While there seems to be consensus that 21st century health care will require more teamwork, it will take new educational methods to train health professionals for that reality and to enable them to achieve the new and better results demanded of them. We need to innovate in this regard and at the same time ensure that promising discoveries are shared and adopted by others. Already, I have begun to interact with some of Macy’s grantees around ways of enhancing the dissemination of their work and I look forward to providing advice and guidance to Macy’s myriad of grantees. They are paving the way for a much improved system of health professions education and a healthier public.