Ed Wagner, MD, MPH

Ed Wagner, MD, MPH, director of the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, Wa., received the 2010 Richard and Barbara Hansen Leadership Award and Distinguished Lectureship. Dr. Wagner delivered the Hansen Distinguished Lecture, “Primary Care and the Future of American Medicine,” Oct. 27 in the Coral Ballroom of the Coralville Marriott Hotel.

His lecture opened the statewide policy conference, “Prevention and Chronic Care Management: Community Strategies to Address Chronic Disease in Iowa,” co-sponsored by the UI College of Public Health, the Iowa Prevention and Chronic Care Management Advisory Council, and the Partnership for Better Health.

On Oct. 27, Dr. Wagner met with College of Public Health students to discuss “Primary Care and the Future of American Medicine.”

Biographical Information

Ed Wagner is senior investigator and director of the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. He is also a professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine.

Dr. Wagner established The MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation in 1992, launching a new effort to move advances in quality improvement research into practice. He and his team developed and disseminated the Chronic Care Model (CCM), an evidence-based framework for health care that delivers safe, effective, and collaborative care to patients.

The CCM is widely recognized for its capacity to guide health care teams in caring for chronically ill patients. Funded as a national program by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by Dr. Wagner, Improving Chronic Illness Care (ICIC) introduced the Chronic Care Model to a wide spectrum of organizations, ranging from Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) to individual health care practices of all sizes and types.

Dr. Wagner also serves as principal investigator for the Cancer Research Network (CRN), a National Cancer Institute-funded consortium of 14 health-plan-based research organizations. The CRN is part of the HMO Research Network, a larger alliance of health care delivery organizations with sophisticated research capabilities that he helped establish in 1996.

Dr. Wagner’s professional service is extensive. First serving as co-chair of the task force that led to the creation of the Puget Sound Health Alliance (PSHA), he now participates in its quality improvement committee. PSHA is a regional multi-stakeholder collaboration committed to improving health care quality and reducing costs in the Pacific Northwest. He also provides ongoing consultation to organizations such as CMS and the World Health Organization and has been a key contributor to a variety of Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports, including several focused on caring for underserved and uninsured populations.

In 2007, Dr. Wagner received the Health Quality Award from the National Committee for Quality Insurance and was elected into the IOM. A longstanding champion of patient-centered care, he was also honored with the Picker Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Patient-Centered Care—for advocating that respecting patients’ values and preferences be central to chronic illness care.

Dr. Wagner has authored two books and more than 250 publications. He serves on the editorial boards of Health Services Research, the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, and the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.