On October 29, 2015, former California Health Care Foundation board chair A. Eugene Washington, MD, MPH, MSc, returned to the Bay Area from North Carolina, where he leads the Duke University Health System, to deliver The John Eisenberg Legacy Lectureship at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

This lectureship honors the vision of John Eisenberg, former head of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). A distinguished individual from either the health services research or health policy worlds is selected as the annual lecturer. Honorees are selected because they exemplify Dr. Eisenberg’s commitment to bringing the best of health services research to bear on crucial issues that face clinicians and policymakers, such as quality of care and patient safety, disparities in health status and outcomes, and the nexus between economics and medicine. The lectureship is presented with support from the California Health Care Foundation.

Dr. Washington is chancellor for health affairs at Duke University and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System. He served from 2010 to 2015 as vice chancellor of health sciences, dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and CEO of the UCLA Health System. He was also a distinguished professor of gynecology and health policy at UCLA. Dr. Washington previously held leadership positions over many years at UCSF, where he served as executive vice chancellor from 2003 to 2010. A 1976 graduate of the UCSF School of Medicine, Dr. Washington completed graduate studies at both UC Berkeley and Harvard schools of public health and residency training at Stanford University.

A respected clinical investigator and health policy scholar, Dr. Washington has been a national leader in assessing medical technologies, developing clinical practice guidelines, and establishing disease prevention policies, particularly for women’s health. He has published extensively in his major areas of research, which include prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, noncancerous uterine conditions management, reproductive tract infections, quality of health care, and racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes.

Dr. Washington was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997, where he served on the executive committee of IOM’s governing council, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. He has served on a number of professional and government boards and committees, including the board of trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the congressionally mandated Scientific Management Review Board of the National Institutes of Health, and the boards of directors of CHCF and the California Wellness Foundation, where he was chair of each board. Dr. Washington is founding chair of the board of governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a national research organization dedicated to the support and promotion of comparative clinical effectiveness research, which was authorized by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Here are all of the scholars who have delivered the The John Eisenberg Legacy Lectureship since 2003:

• David Mechanic, 2013
• Carolyn Clancy, 2012
• Harold Sox, 2011
• Joseph Newhouse, 2010
• Harvey Fineberg, 2008
• Victor Fuchs, 2007
• Elizabeth McGlynn, 2006
• John Wennberg, 2005
• Barbara McNeil, 2004
• Donald Berwick, 2003

Gene Washington

Gene Washington is chancellor for health affairs at Duke University and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System. He served from 2010 to 2015 as vice chancellor of health sciences, dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and CEO of the UCLA Health System. He was also a distinguished professor of gynecology and health policy at UCLA. Read More