Harvard gets $30m to create center to lift primary care

Harvard Medical School has received a $30 million anonymous gift to create a major center to transform primary care medicine, a specialty that provides routine front-line care to millions of people but that many doctors consider unglamorous and underpaid.

Ultimately, Harvard — which some physicians believe has neglected primary care — wants to help fix the nation’s shortage of primary care doctors by raising their status among their peers and improving working conditions, said the dean, Dr. Jeffrey Flier.

He said the center will pay part of the salaries for 20 to 30 faculty, oversee expansion of the curriculum in primary care, and fund research and experiments to test new models of providing primary care. The school hopes to recruit a renowned national leader in the field to head the center, which Harvard planned to announce today. It will open over the next few months.