Dr. A. Eugene Washington, CEO of the UCLA Health System and a well-known figure among academic medical center leaders, will leave California to become president and CEO at Duke University Health System, Duke announced Tuesday.
Washington, 64, will leave UCLA at the end of February and join Duke April 1, when he'll also become the university's chancellor for health affairs. He replaces Dr. Victor Dzau, who left the Durham, N.C.-based system in June to become president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. At UCLA, Washington also served as dean of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences.
At Duke, Washington will oversee the university's health system, medical school, nursing school and programs involving patient care, biomedical research and community service. He was selected after a national search by a 15-member committee.
Washington was appointed in 2010 to the board of governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a comparative clinical-effectiveness research center established under the Affordable Care Act. Under his leadership as founding chair, the organization adopted its first methodology standards and began funding research.
Prior to joining UCLA that same year, Washington was executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California at San Francisco, where he obtained his medical degree. While there, he co-founded the UCSF-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center. Prior to that, Washington worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
In November, Washington was recognized for his “major contributions to improving the health and healthcare of the American people” as a recipient of the David E. Rogers Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He also has received an Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service and was elected to the IOM almost two decades ago.
Washington was one of five academic medical center leaders who penned a September report from the IOM that urged academic hospitals to build partnerships inside and outside the sector.
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