Duke University is launching a new health policy center whose goal is to develop ideas on health reform and move them into practical implementation, President Richard H. Brodhead announced Monday.
The center, founded with a $16.5 million gift from Duke medical school alumnus Robert J. Margolis and his wife Lisa, through the Robert and Lisa Margolis Family Foundation, will connect the intellectual resources at Duke with policymakers and policy analysts in the public and private sector. Disciplines involved in the Duke-Robert J. Margolis, MD, Center for Health Policy will include business, biomedical research, clinical care, public policy, global health, law and other areas.
The center’s inaugural director will be Mark McClellan, one of the nation’s leaders in health policy and reform. McClellan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Health Care Innovation and Value Initiatives, and much of this work will be moving to the new Duke-Margolis Center. Gregory Daniel, a Brookings fellow and leader of its biomedical innovation portfolio, will join McClellan and help direct the center’s Washington, D.C., office.
The Duke-Margolis Center will be based at the Fuqua School of Business, with staff and offices in both Durham and at Duke’s center in Washington, D.C. It will have participation from faculty and staff at Fuqua, Sanford School of Public Policy, School of Medicine, School of Law and other units, and will collaborate with experts and health care reformers from across the country and around the world. The center’s activities will include serving as a hub for “translational” policy research and analysis -- that is, for supporting the movement of promising ideas in health reform into the implementation of effective policy.
“This new initiative marks an important and transformative collaboration within Duke, bringing together our campus schools and Duke Medicine,” said Sally Kornbluth, PhD, Duke’s provost and Jo Rae Wright University Professor. “The Duke-Margolis Center under the direction of Mark McClellan will be the focal point for faculty and students to test ideas, bring them forward to create change and to realize Duke’s full potential in a vital field.”
Added Eugene Washington, MD, MPH, MSc, chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System, “Since arriving at Duke, I have gained a keen appreciation of the tremendous portfolio of health-related programs arrayed across the university. We are incredibly grateful and proud that the vision to draw on all the components through the Duke-Margolis Center is being made possible by one of the most distinguished graduates of our School of Medicine.”
Watch a message from the center's director, Mark McClellan: