Primary Care Division Funding Halted at Harvard Medical – Petition Circulated to Reinstate

Is this somewhat stating that Primary Care is perhaps not an emphasis at Harvard without enough academic education? You can also read the CEO’s message from Harvard Pilgrim Health resignation speech here. BD

More than 500 medical students, doctors, and professors have signed a petition urging Harvard Medical School to restore funding for its Division of Primary Care, cuts the school says reflects a reorganization and not a retrenchment from its commitment to primary care medicine and education.

"Such a budget cut seems at odds with both increased national recognition of the crisis in primary care and encouraging signs of late that Harvard acknowledges its responsibility to help address this crisis," the petition says.

The division had been embedded in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, a partnership with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. But after that department moved over to the health plan as of July 1, Harvard's side of the endeavor, which was devoted to research and education, eliminated funding for the division in the renamed Department of Population Medicine.

Dr. David Himmelstein, a faculty member who practices internal medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and signed the petition, said suspending the division for the next academic year is symbolically important.