On May 22, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care leaders, staff and representatives of its constituencies – including network clinician leaders, consumer and employer representatives – gathered to congratulate Professor Jim Sabin for his 20-year leadership of the Harvard Pilgrim Ethics Program and welcome his successor, Associate Professor Anita Wagner, as the new leader of the Ethics Advisory Group.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Sabin has developed the cases for and adeptly facilitated more than 100 HPHC Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) discussions.  These discussions, consisting of 25-35 participants from HPHC and its stakeholder communities, address ethically challenging topics for which HPHC seeks the EAG’s support in its deliberations.  As highlighted by Professor Richard Platt, Chair of the DPM, “the HPHC Ethics Program Jim has led so ably for Harvard Pilgrim is an exemplar of the HPHC Institute’s mission in action: to understand the many important issues Harvard Pilgrim deals with to inform scholarship and academic inquiry and then to use those learnings to help improve the care of the population we serve.”

Dr. Sabin is Clinical Professor of both Population Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  For over five decades, he has championed the cause of ethics in psychiatry and promoted the ethical use of resources to enhance public health and wellness. In 2018, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society.  He joined the Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP) psychiatry practice in 1975 and served as its Associate Medical Director for 7 years. In 1986 he joined the fledgling HCHP Teaching Center, which eventually became part of the Department of Population Medicine/HPHC Institute. At the Institute, Jim teaches medical students and primary care residents in ethics and health policy.

Please join us in celebrating and thanking Dr. Sabin for his 20-year leadership of the Ethics Program!