Principal Investigator
Brian Jack, MD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center. Dr. Jack graduated from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed his residency training at the Brown University. He completed a fellowship at the University of Washington. Dr. Jack came to BU and Boston Medical Center in 1997 as the founding Vice Chair of the Department of Family Medicine. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles or book chapters, reviewed papers for major medical journals, served on NICHHD, HRSA and AHRQ grant review panels. He is currently PI on grants from HRSA, NHLBI, PCORI, AHRQ, Kellogg Foundation and NIMHD.
His research team has developed the "ReEngineered Discharge" (Project RED), adapted by the National Quality Forum as a national "Safe Practice". RED is being used in all states and in over 10 countries. He completed projects with AHRQ funding including “Reengineering the Hospital Discharge for Patient Safety” which provided an in-depth analysis of the hospital discharge process. RED was then tested in Testing the Re-Engineered Hospital Discharge a RCT funded by AHRQ in the “Partners in Patient Safety” grants. Dissemination and implementation of RED was explored in an Action RFTO entitled Avoiding Readmissions in Hospitals Serving Diverse patients. Building on a RO1 from NHLBI with colleague Tim Bickmore of Northeastern University, he developed a health IT system to deliver RED at the bedside (the “Louise” system). Dr. Jack completed an AHRQ funded project entitled “Virtual Patient Advocates to Reduce Ambulatory Drug Events” that adapted Louise to be used by patients online when they went home from the hospital designed to monitor medication adverse events related to the transition from the hospital to the ambulatory environment. He recently completed a project to design a tool kit describing the RED process and studied the barriers to RED implementation. New projects include a RCT of a mental health intervention to reduce rehospitalizations for those with depressive symptoms (AHRQ, Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation) and an exploration of the causes of readmission from the patient perspective that focuses on mental health and the social determinants of care (PCORI).
Dr. Jack received the 2008 CDC "Partner in Public Health Improvement” award for his work as leader of the CDC’s Select Panel on the Content of Preconception Care. He has completed work to design a preconception HIT system (Gabby) to assist in the provision of this care (AHRQ, HRSA MCHB, Kellogg) and is beginning a RCT to study its impact (NIMHD).
He received the 2013 Peter F. Drucker Award for Non-Profit Innovation, the “Patient Care Award for Excellence in Patent Education Innovation” award, the AHRQ “Patient Safety Investigator” award, and the “Best Research Paper of the Year” award of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine. He was selected to HealthLeaders magazines annual "People Who Make Healthcare Better" list and one of Boston’s “Best Doctors” in each of 2010-2014. His Annals of Internal Medicine article describing RED is listed in the book "50 Studies Every Physician Should Know". In 2013 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.
Dr. Jack has also been active in the worldwide development of family medicine. He is Director of the Lesotho Boston Health Alliance, a Kellogg Foundation funded program that aims to improve the quality of district health services in Lesotho. He is a founding member of the AAFP's Center for International Initiatives. He spent a sabbatical year in Budapest, Hungary in 1995 where he received a special citation from the mayor of Budapest. He taught in Jordan and Pakistan and has worked on development of family medicine in Lesotho, Albania, Jordan, Romania, and Vietnam.
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