Addressing a near-capacity crowd in the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, HMS dean Jeffrey Flier said, “Tonight I’m not here to talk about my views on primary care. I’m here to listen.”
The May 13 event, a town meeting on primary-care training and education, provided an opportunity for the Primary Care Advisory Group (PCAG), which Flier commissioned last year, to present the dean with its official recommendations on how the School can strengthen and enhance its primary-care educational programs. The meeting also provided members of the HMS community an opportunity to give their thoughts on the recommendations as well as on primary-care training in general.
Following Flier’s brief comments, advisory group co-chairs David Bates and Russell Phillips, HMS professors of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, respectively, presented the PCAG’s recommendations. Then Rebecca Berman, HMS instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, fielded audience comments.
One audience member said, to an enthusiastic round of applause, “We need to all become advocates of primary care and help HMS raise funds for it!”
According to Flier, “Training physicians who are practitioners and leaders in primary care, including primary care research, education and policy, is a priority of Harvard Medical School. These recommendations will play a key role in shaping our future efforts to strengthen our commitment to primary care.”
The PCAG comsubcommittee co-chairs, who led work by the three subcommittees, were Sara Fazio and Jonathan Finkelstein for education; Nancy Rigotti and Mark Schuster for research; and James Perrin and Debra Shapiro for clinical innovation.
