Health Reform in 2009: Real, More Political Rhetoric, or Nothing at All

Bio:John C. Baldwin is Associate Provost for Health and Professor of Surgery at Dartmouth. Dr Baldwin is a scientist, university administrator, and physician, with substantial and diverse business experience and well-known accomplishments in biotechnology and bioengineering, intellectual property, technology transfer, pharmaceutical and device company start-ups, health insurance, banking, and non-profit organizations.

Dr. Baldwin serves and has served for ten years as a corporate director and a member of the Audit Committee of the Houston Trust Company in Houston, Texas and has served on several other corporate boards. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Quest Diagnostics, Inc. (NYSE:DGX) and serves on the Audit and Finance Committee and the Quality and Compliance Committee. He has had further finance education and experience as a graduate of both the Harvard School of Public Health Program for Chiefs of Services and the Stanford Law School College for Directors and Officers of publicly-held companies. A native and fifth-generation Texan, Baldwin is also President and Chairman of the Board of privately-held Slater-Baldwin Farms (Slater Creek, Inc.) in Collin County, Texas, an operating farm designated as a Heritage Trust Farm by the State of Texas, with more than 160 years of operation by a single family. He is a Life Member of The Sons of the Republic of Texas. Appointed by the judiciary, he is a Special Commissioner in the State of Texas on matters related to real estate. Dr. Baldwin is a member of the board of The New England Healthcare Institute, founded by Genzyme, Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also serves as Senior Adviser to Quintiles Transnational Corporation on matters of health care policy, large study design, and business consulting.

Baldwin has led large and complex organizations and has had direct responsibility for their budgets. He served as Dean of Dartmouth Medical School from 1998 until 2002, when he was promoted to Associate Provost of the university. Baldwin led Dartmouth Medical School in achieving the greatest growth in its history, with a doubling of the endowment, more than doubling of its extra-mural research funding, creation of a new Department of Genetics, dramatic expansion of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and appointment of nine new department chairs. Overseeing 16 clinical and basic science departments, with approximately 2,000 faculty members and an overall medical center budget of nearly $1bn, no organization that he has led has ever experienced an operating deficit. He has raised the national visibility of Dartmouth Medical School in many ways, with 2002 research awards exceeding $110m and ranking of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program as third in the nation by the National Association of Graduate and Professional Students. Research science has thrived at Dartmouth because of Baldwin's work. Dr. Baldwin also conceived of and realized the Dartmouth Health Care Policy Group, drawing together faculty and students from Dartmouth Medical School, the Dartmouth Department of Economics, the Rockefeller Institute of Politics at Dartmouth, and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business to address the current economic crisis in the American health system. In this context, he has written extensively in the lay press on issues related to the American health care system.

In the burgeoning Dartmouth genetics initiative, Baldwin serves as Principal Investigator on a $3.5m grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which was the cornerstone for this new department. In August 2000, Baldwin was awarded, as Principal Investigator, a $1 million federal grant to support the renovation of research laboratories for the Department of Genetics. In the clinical area, Dr. Baldwin, working with both the university and the medical center, unified the clinical faculty practice of more than 500 clinical faculty members under the name Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic and led the successful effort to bring a large group of regional hospitals under the name Dartmouth-Hitchcock Alliance. He has facilitated progress toward a measured outcomes and shared decision-making oriented healthcare delivery program. Working closely with Dartmouth Professor C. Everett Koop, M.D., Dr. Baldwin incorporated the renowned Koop Institute into Dartmouth Medical School and merged the boards of the two institutions. He has led broad recruitment in the basic sciences, with the Dartmouth Medical School basic science faculty now ranking at the 85th percentile nationally in National Institutes of Health funding. Dr. Baldwin has taken the lead in re-structuring development at the medical school, resulting in a record $25 million raised in 1999 for teaching and research. In 1998, Dr. Baldwin founded the Dartmouth Community Medical School, which provides a comprehensive medical curriculum every year to the public, with campuses in both northern and southern New Hampshire. Plans are now being made to extend this renowned program to a national audience. Later, working with Mr. John Whitehead and the International Rescue Committee, Baldwin founded the now well-known Dartmouth-Kosovo project, which is working to rebuild the medical school at the University of Pristina, Kosovo. He has been a leader in the effort to eschew zealotry and promote religious and ethnic tolerance in the creation of the new Kosovar medical system.

His background involves considerable experience in federally-funded, state-funded, and privately funded scientific research, and he has been instrumental in launching several pharmaceutical companies and device companies (such as Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Novacor [acquired by Baxter]) and has served on many other scientific advisory boards and corporate boards, in the life sciences, banking, and agriculture. Dr. Baldwin has had extensive experience with the FDA, the NIH (both as a funded investigator and peer reviewer), and clinical payers, including Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies. He has served as a lecturer for seven years in the Department of Engineering at Dartmouth.

Following education in the public school system, John Baldwin attended Harvard College. He was among twelve students from the junior year to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received the Wendell Scholarship, awarded to the outstanding student of the freshman class, the John Harvard Scholarship, and the Detur Prize. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Baldwin worked as a computer programmer and research assistant under Professor Jean Hiernaux, at the University of Paris (Sorbonne). Later, while still a Harvard undergraduate, Baldwin conducted research in the area of computer-generated mathematical models for elucidating the relationship between genetic and environmental factors in child growth and development based upon data he collected in East Africa. While he had extensive experience related to health and human rights issues in Uganda, his formal research involved surveying the nutritional and growth status of children in rural Uganda, under the auspices of the Ugandan government with grant support from the National Science Foundation. Under the mentorship of Professors William White Howells and Albert Damon, Baldwin earned the Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1971.

Upon graduation from Harvard, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and studied under Hugh Sinclair at Oxford, where he remains closely involved in programs to advance science at Oxford. Returning from England, Baldwin received his medical training at Stanford, where he received his M.D. and the Alumni Scholar Award of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Baldwin then completed internship and residency training in both internal medicine and surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. During that time, he was also appointed as a Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Subsequently, Dr. Baldwin returned to Stanford University for specialized training in cardiothoracic and transplantation surgery. He is actively certified by the National Board of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Surgery, and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

Dr. Baldwin was invited to join the faculty of Stanford University upon completion of his surgical training in 1984 and was later appointed head of the heart/lung transplantation program and director of the cardiovascular surgery research laboratories at Stanford. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Baldwin's research team developed the currently-used method for preservation of lung tissue for transplantation, and he performed the first successful human transplantation of lung tissue procured at long distance in 1986. In 1988, Dr. Baldwin was appointed Professor and Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Yale University, where he built a large clinical program in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery. His clinical and research groups at Yale made contributions in cardiovascular physiology, heart and lung transplantation, anti-rejection drugs, heart assist devices, and cellular biology-based techniques for sub-zero tissue preservation.

In 1994, Dr. Baldwin was chosen to succeed Dr. Michael DeBakey as head of surgical programs at Baylor College of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals in Houston, Texas. From 1994 through 1998, Dr. Baldwin held the DeBakey-Bard Chair of Surgery and the Chairmanship of the Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. He also served as Chief of Surgical Services at The Methodist Hospital and as Physician-in-Chief, Service of Surgery, at the Ben Taub General Hospital. Dr. Baldwin was responsible for the surgical services at The Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, the Houston Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Ben Taub General Hospital. While at Baylor, Baldwin and his team performed the first successful Òauto-transplantÓ of the human heart, removing the heart of a child with an intra-cardiac tumor, removing the tumor, and successfully re-implanting the heart. While chair at Baylor, Dr. Baldwin had administrative responsibility for an organization with more than 170 surgeons, 400 employees, and an annual budget of more than $50 million. His educational responsibilities involved more than 100 residents and fellows, some 600 Baylor medical students who rotated through his department, and an extensive continuing education program for post-graduate physicians. Dr. Baldwin developed an extensive research program at Baylor, with external funding increasing by more than ten-fold under his leadership. He comprehensively re-organized the educational programs in that department and was recognized for innovative contributions to the methods and metrics related to undergraduate and graduate medical education.

Dr. Baldwin has been a leader in the demonstration of the importance of evidence-based decision making in health care for the past decade. He served at Baylor as Chairman of the Task Force for Primary Care of Baylor MedCare, one if the largest health care corporations in Texas, with clinical activity producing $1 billion in gross revenue. Dr. Baldwin also served on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of Baylor MedCare. He has been at the forefront of the effort to apply rigorous statistical methods to clinical processes and outcomes analysis and to translate these methods of evidence-based decision making to quality improvement and cost control in today's health and business environment.

The author of more than 400 publications, Dr. Baldwin has been invited to give more than 350 lectures around the world since 1984 and has served as a visiting professor at more than 40 universities. He serves on the editorial board of numerous medical and scientific journals, including The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Transplantation, and Transplantation Science. He has been editor and author of many textbooks published in America and around the world. He is recognized as an ardent spokesman for the importance of technology in the advancement of our understanding of wellness and disease.

Dr. Baldwin has received numerous professional and civic awards, including the Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Service of the American Heart Association, the Gold Medal of the Gothenburg (Sweden) Society, the Medaille de la ville de Bordeaux of the French Thoracic Society, the Traveling Lectureship Award of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Australia and New Zealand Chapter of the American College of Surgeons Traveling Fellowship Award, and The Master Teacher Award from Cardiovascular Reviews and Reports. In 2002, John Baldwin received the highest civilian award given by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Commendation, for his commitment to improving the care of U.S. veterans.

He was selected in the Town and Country Magazine physician-generated survey as one of the best heart surgeons in America and has been cited in the field of cardiothoracic surgery in the Woodward and White national survey of The Best Doctors in America every year since its inception in 1992. Dr. Baldwin was named Presidential Fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in 2002 and lectured there on the origin and utility of the current concept of human rights. Results of his work in Salzburg appeared in 2002 in the International Herald Tribune. He has also contributed in the public domain on issues of public and private education, from K-12 through university levels and has a wide-ranging commitment to the teaching of science and technology in out schools.

Dr. Baldwin has held leadership positions in many national professional societies. From 1991 through 1997, he served as a Governor of the American College of Surgeons and, in1999, Dr. Baldwin was elected President of the International Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons. In 1996, Dr. Baldwin was invited to chair the annual educational program of the American College of Surgeons to update heart surgeons from around the world on recent developments in the field.

Baldwin has numerous civic commitments and serves on the boards of a number of national non-profit institutions, including the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in Washington, D. C. and the Boston-based Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, serving medically needy people throughout the world through its fellowship and direct aid programs. He was the founder of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship for the study of Ethics in Animal Research. He has served on the national board of directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing, where he dealt with many issues involving the interaction of public policy, science, and ethics. He also served for four years as a member of the Ethics Committee of The Methodist Hospital in Houston, the largest private, non-profit hospital in the world. He is an active member of the American Friends of Magdalen College, the Oxford Society of Washington, D. C., and the Committee for the Bodleian Library (Oxford).

John Baldwin was elected to the Board of Overseers of Harvard University in 1995 and was selected as its Vice-Chair in 2000. At Harvard, he has also served on the Visiting Committee to the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Visiting Committee to the Department of Anthropology, the Visiting Committee to the Harvard Medical School, the Standing Committee to Visit Harvard College (Vice-Chair), the Standing Committee for the Natural Sciences (Chair), and the Committee on Women's Studies and Women Scholars at Harvard. He currently serves as a member of Harvard's Committee to Visit the College and the Eliot House Senior Common Room. For the past 33 years, Baldwin has interviewed candidates for admission to Harvard College every year, and he has worked tirelessly as a fundraiser for Harvard. Baldwin has delivered more than 350 invited lectures in the past two decades, ranging in subject from molecular biology and technology to British history.

Dr. Baldwin has three sons, Alistair Edward Stewart Baldwin, a law student and recent graduate of Harvard College, John Benjamin West Baldwin, a recent graduate of Harvard College and currently a financial analyst in Dallas, and Andrew Christian William Baldwin, a member of the Class of 2005 at Harvard College. Dr. Baldwin is a member of St. Peter's Episcopal Church and a former vestryman and board member at St. Thomas's Episcopal Church and School (New Haven, Connecticut). He has been active nationally in the work of Episcopal schools and in advocacy for public schools. Baldwin has served as Co-Chair of the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award.