Emily Oken, MD, is the new president of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and chair of its population medicine department at Boston-based Harvard Medical School.
Point32Health — the parent organization of Canton, Mass.-based Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Watertown, Mass.-based Tufts Health Plan — shared the news with Becker's Jan. 11. The institute "focuses on improving health care delivery and population health through innovative research and education, in partnership with health plans, delivery systems, and public health agencies," according to the news release.
It is the first appointing medical school department based in a health plan in the U.S., and Dr. Oken will be its third leader since its 1992 conception.
Dr. Oken, an internal medicine physician and pediatrician, has served on-faculty at the institute since 2003. She has served as vice chair of the institute's population medicine department and director of the Division of Chronic Disease Research Across the Lifecourse since 2016. She is also a professor of population medicine at the institute and Harvard Medical School.
She succeeds Richard Platt, MD, who is stepping down after 20 years at the institute's helm. He will remain on-faculty as a researcher and director of the institute's therapeutics research and infectious disease epidemiology division.