Partners In Health Names Gary Gottlieb Chief Executive Officer

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Marvin, Media Relations
jmarvin@pih.org

BOSTON (Oct. 24, 2014)—Partners In Health announced today that it will name Dr. Gary Gottlieb as the organization’s next CEO, effective July 1, 2015. Gottlieb, currently the president and CEO of Partners HealthCare, was recruited by Partners In Health to assume the role long held by Ophelia Dahl. Last May, Dahl announced she would step down as executive director but would remain deeply involved in the organization’s work and serve as chair of the board.

Dahl has led Partners In Health since 2000, an organization she co-founded in 1987 with Dr. Paul Farmer, World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim, Todd McCormack, and Tom White. Over the past three decades, Partners In Health has grown from a rural clinic in Cange, Haiti, to a leading global health organization delivering high-quality health care on four continents.

“I cannot imagine anything more fulfilling than being involved in a mission that links social justice and health care,” said Dahl. “Together we have taken significant steps to improve access to health care in poor communities around the world. But there is more work to do to leverage service with research and teaching, and that is why I am thrilled Gary Gottlieb will take the helm of the organization. Gary brings a passion for social justice and vast experience in the health care field. I look forward to working closely with Gary toward advancing our mission and amplifying our impact across all the places we work.”

Gary Gottlieb has served as president and CEO of Partners HealthCare since 2010. Throughout his career, Gottlieb has focused on disparities in health care and been an active member on Partners In Health’s Board of Governors for nearly a decade. By joining Partners In Health as CEO, Gottlieb will have the opportunity to continue this work as a champion for social justice and access to health care in a full-time capacity.

“Expanding and improving access to health care has been the most challenging and important work of my life,” said Gottlieb. “I’m eager to take on this inspiring role to tackle global health issues with Partners In Health. There is still much work to do to bring high-quality health care to poor and marginalized communities across the globe. I’m honored to join this top-notch team, and humbled by the challenge.”

“Ophelia has been our guide for the better part of two decades, and one of the reasons PIH has continued to grow over the years, the other being an immense and still unmet need, as Ebola reminds us,” said Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health.

“The mission of PIH—to link the delivery of health care for the poor to the tasks of training ‘local’ partners to do so and to generate new knowledge—comes from the model of academic medicine,” Farmer said. “So those of us who founded PIH almost three decades ago, including Ophelia, were hoping and praying for a leader from academic medicine, someone with a commitment to social justice and to improving the management of health systems, some of the most complex institutions in the world, even in settings of great privation.”

“Gary is a dream come true. He weds deep affection for PIH—through many trips to Haiti and Rwanda, but also as a board member and the former or current boss of scores of our volunteers from Harvard's teaching hospitals—with the sort of management and clinical skills needed to bring PIH to the next level,” said Farmer. “There's no place from which to see this more clearly than West Africa right now.”

About Partners In Health: Partners In Health is a global health organization relentlessly committed to improving the health of the poor and marginalized. We build local capacity and work closely with impoverished communities to deliver high-quality health care, address the root causes of illness, train providers, advance research, and advocate for global policy change. For more information please visit www.pih.org.

About Gary Gottlieb, MD: Dr. Gary Gottlieb has served as president and CEO of Partners HealthCare since 2010. Dr. Gottlieb is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. He served as president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as president of North Shore Medical Center, and as chairman of Partners Psychiatry. Dr. Gottlieb has also served as executive vice-chair of psychiatry and associate dean for managed care at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, and as director and CEO of Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, Gottlieb has focused on disparities in health care and been an active member on Partners In Health’s Board of Governors for the past eight years. By joining Partners In Health as CEO, Gottlieb will have the opportunity to continue this work as a champion for social justice and access to health care in a full-time capacity.

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