| Lucian L. Leape, MD
Dr. Leape is a health policy analyst whose research has focused on patient safety and quality of care. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 1988, he was Professor of Surgery and Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine and the New England Medical Center. Dr. Leape is internationally recognized as a leader of the patient safety movement since publication of his seminal article, Error in Medicine in JAMA in 1994. He has been an outspoken advocate of the nonpunitive systems approach to the prevention of medical errors and he has talked and written widely about the need to make patient safety a national priority. He has testified many times before Congress and served on numerous public and private organizational boards and committees.
Dr. Leape was one of the founders of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Error, and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Session on Medical Error. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Care in America Committee that published, “To Err is Human” in 1999 and “Crossing the Quality Chasm” in 2001.
He has received numerous awards for his efforts including the Distinguished Service Award of the American Pediatric Surgical Association, the Donabedian Award from the American Public Health Association, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator's Award in Health Policy Research, and honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. In 2004, Dr. Leape received the John Eisenberg Patient Safety Award, and in 2006 Modern Healthcare named him as one of 30 people who have had the most impact on healthcare over the past 30 years.
