Former faculty member Wagner wins AUPHA’s Graham Prize for health services research

Edward H. Wagner, MD, MPH, alumnus and former epidemiology faculty member at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been named the 2011 recipient of the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research, the highest distinction for health services researchers.

 

Funded by The Baxter International Foundation, the prize is managed by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). Wagner will accept the award on June 25, at AUPHA’s annual meeting in Charleston, S.C.
In 1983, Wagner founded Group Health Research Institute (GHRI), a nonproprietary, public-domain research institution. As the institute’s director until 1998, he worked to improve health care through leading-edge research, innovation and dissemination. In 1992, he established GHRI’s MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation, which he still directs. There, his team developed the Chronic Care Model, an evidence-based framework that seeks to improve the delivery of safe, effective and collaborative care to patients. He is also principal investigator for the Cancer Research Network, a National Cancer Institute-funded consortium of 14 health-plan-based research organizations in the HMO Research Network.A professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health, Wagner is best known for work in chronic illness management, cancer care and aging. Recognized as a champion of patient-centered care, he has received numerous honors and awards and has authored more than 250 publications.

“Dr. Wagner provides innovation and excellence in everything he does,” said Kyle Grazier, DrPH, University of Michigan School of Public Health professor, and Graham Prize Selection Committee chair. “Through his Chronic Care Model, Dr. Wagner is still transforming the role of chronic illness care in health and health services delivery. His extraordinary leadership is evident in the research and policy centers he has created throughout the past 30 years to study evidence-based management and clinical practice, to teach future clinicians and investigators, and to implement integrated health care across the life span. Dr. Wagner truly deserves this year’s prestigious William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research.”

Wagner received a Doctor of Medicine from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1965 and a Master of Public Health degree from UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in 1972.

He was recently honored at UNC’s public health school with the establishment of The Kerr L. White and Edward H. Wagner Scholarship in Health Care Research. David J. Ballard, MD, PhD, and his wife Michela Caruso, MD, funded the scholarship to recognize Ballard’s mentors at UNC. “Dr. Wagner mentored countless students who have made landmark contributions to medicine and public health,” Ballard said. “The scholarship endeavors to cultivate new scholars who will bridge medicine and public health to generate innovative solutions to health care delivery challenges.”

“The prior recipients of the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research include the most distinguished scientists in our field,” Wagner said. “I am honored and humbled to be included with them, and grateful to the many research and clinical colleagues who have contributed so much to our work. For American health care to provide excellent quality care at a sustainable cost, it must have a robust primary care sector able to successfully manage complex, chronically ill patients in the community. I have been blessed to work with dedicated, creative clinicians who are showing that it can be done.”

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.