John C. Baldwin, M.D.
John C. Baldwin, M.D., is professor of surgery at Harvard University and president of the Immune Disease Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. He is a scientist, university administrator, and physician, with substantial and diverse business experience in biotechnology and bioengineering, intellectual property, technology transfer, pharmaceutical and device company start-ups, health insurance, banking, and non-profit organizations. Prior to his recruitment to Harvard in January of 2005, he held a tenured Professorship at Dartmouth, where he also served as dean and associate provost for Health Sciences.
A native and fifth-generation Texan, Dr. Baldwin is also president and chairman of the board of privately-held Slater-Baldwin Farms (Slater Creek, Inc.) in Collin County, Texas, an operating farm designated as a Heritage Trust Farm by the State of Texas, with more than 160 years of operation by a single family. He is a Life Member of The Sons of the Republic of Texas. Appointed by the judiciary, he is a special commissioner in the State of Texas on matters related to real estate.
His background involves experience in federally-funded, state-funded, and privately funded scientific research, and he has been instrumental in launching several pharmaceutical companies and device companies, and has served on many other scientific advisory boards and corporate boards in the life sciences, banking, and agriculture. Dr. Baldwin has had extensive experience with the FDA, the NIH (both as a funded investigator and peer reviewer), and clinical payors, including Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies.
Following education in the public school system, Dr. Baldwin attended Harvard College. He was among 12 students from the junior class to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received the Wendell Scholarship, awarded to the outstanding student of the freshman class, the John Harvard Scholarship, and the Detur Prize. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Dr. Baldwin worked as a computer programmer and research assistant under Professor Jean Hiernaux, at the University of Paris (Sorbonne). Later, while still a Harvard undergraduate, Dr. Baldwin conducted research in the area of computer-generated mathematical models for elucidating the relationship between genetic and environmental factors in child growth and development based upon data he collected in East Africa. While he had extensive experience related to health and human rights issues in Uganda, his formal research involved surveying the nutritional and growth status of children in rural Uganda, under the auspices of the Ugandan government with grant support from the National Science Foundation. Under the mentorship of professors William White Howells and Albert Damon, Dr. Baldwin earned the Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude from Harvard University.
Upon graduation from Harvard, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and studied physiology under Hugh Sinclair at Oxford. Returning from England, Dr. Baldwin received his medical training at Stanford, where he received his M.D. and the Alumni Scholar Award of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Dr. Baldwin then completed internship and residency training in both internal medicine and surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. During that time, he was also appointed as a Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Subsequently, Dr. Baldwin returned to Stanford University for specialized training in cardiothoracic and transplantation surgery. He is certified by the National Board of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Surgery, and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.
Dr. Baldwin was invited to join the faculty of Stanford University upon completion of his surgical training in 1984 and was later appointed head of the heart/lung transplantation program and director of the cardiovascular surgery research laboratories at Stanford. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Baldwin’s research team developed the currently-used method for preservation of lung tissue for transplantation, and he performed the first successful human transplantation of lung tissue procured at long distance in 1986. In 1988, Dr. Baldwin was appointed professor and chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Yale University, where he built a large clinical program in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery. His clinical and research groups at Yale made contributions in cardiovascular physiology, heart and lung transplantation, anti-rejection drugs, heart assist devices, and cellular biology-based techniques for sub-zero tissue preservation. While at both Stanford and Yale, Dr. Baldwin taught for-credit courses unrelated to medicine for undergraduates. At Yale, he taught a for-credit course in the Department of History on British politics.
In 1994, Dr. Baldwin was chosen to succeed Dr. Michael DeBakey as head of surgical programs at Baylor College of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals in Houston, Texas. From 1994 through 1998, Dr. Baldwin held the DeBakey Chair of Surgery and the chairmanship of the Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. He also served as chief of Surgical Services at The Methodist Hospital and as physician-in-chief, Service of Surgery, at the Ben Taub General Hospital. Dr. Baldwin was responsible for the surgical services at The Methodist Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Houston Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Ben Taub General Hospital. While at Baylor, Baldwin and his team performed the first successful “auto-transplant” of the human heart, removing the heart of a child with an intra-cardiac tumor, removing the tumor, and successfully re-implanting the heart. While chair at Baylor, Dr. Baldwin had administrative responsibility for an organization with more than 170 faculty, 400 support staff, and an annual budget of more than $50 million. Dr. Baldwin developed an extensive research program at Baylor, with external funding increasing by more than ten-fold under his leadership. He comprehensively re-organized the educational programs in that department and was recognized for innovative contributions to the methods and metrics related to undergraduate and graduate medical education. While in Houston, Dr. Baldwin served as visiting professor in the Department of History at Rice University.
He served at Baylor as chairman of the Task Force for Primary Care of Baylor MedCare, one of the largest health care corporations in Texas, with clinical activity producing $1 billion in gross revenue. Dr. Baldwin also served on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of Baylor MedCare. He has been at the forefront of the effort to apply rigorous statistical methods to clinical processes and outcomes analysis and to translate these methods of evidence-based decision-making to quality improvement and cost control in today’s health and business environment.
Dr. Baldwin has, as has been noted, led large and complex organizations of several types and has had direct responsibility for their budgets. He served as dean of Dartmouth Medical School and associate provost from 1998 until 2005. Baldwin led Dartmouth Medical School in doubling of the endowment, more than doubling of its extra-mural research funding, creation of a new Department of Genetics, dramatic expansion of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and appointment of nine new department chairs. Dr. Baldwin oversaw 16 academic departments, with approximately 2,000 faculty members and an overall medical center budget of nearly $1 billion. He raised the national visibility of Dartmouth Medical School in many ways, with 2002 research awards exceeding $110 million and ranking of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program. Dr. Baldwin also conceived of and realized the Dartmouth Health Care Policy Group, drawing together faculty and students from Dartmouth Medical School, the Dartmouth Department of Economics, and the Rockefeller Institute of Politics at Dartmouth.
The author of more than 400 publications, Dr. Baldwin has been invited to give more than 350 lectures on a wide variety of topics around the world and has served as a visiting professor at more than 50 universities. He serves on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals. He has been editor and author of many textbooks published in America and around the world.
Dr. Baldwin has received numerous professional and civic awards, including the Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Service of the American Heart Association, the Gold Medal of the Gothenburg (Sweden) Society, the Medaille de la Ville de Bordeaux of the French Thoracic Society, the Traveling Lectureship Award of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Australia and New Zealand Chapter of the American College of Surgeons Traveling Fellowship Award, and The Master Teacher Award from Cardiovascular Reviews and Reports. In 2002, he received the highest civilian award given by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the Veterans’ National Commendation, for his commitment and long service in improving the care of U.S. veterans. In 2006, he was recognized for his work in support of international human rights with the “Make Gentle the Life of the World” award by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial.
He was selected in the Town and Country Magazine physician-generated survey as one of the best heart surgeons in America and has been cited in the field of cardiothoracic surgery in the Woodward and White national survey of The Best Doctors in America every year since its inception in 1992. Dr. Baldwin was named Presidential Fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in 2002 and lectured there on the origin and utility of the current concept of human rights. He described this work in a 2002 publication in the International Herald Tribune.
Dr. Baldwin has held leadership positions in many national professional societies. From 1991 through 1997, he served as a governor of the American College of Surgeons and, in 1999, was elected president of the International Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons. In 1996, Dr. Baldwin was invited to chair the annual educational program of the American College of Surgeons to update heart surgeons from around the world on recent developments in the field.
Dr. Baldwin has numerous civic commitments and serves on the boards of a number of national non-profit institutions. He has served on the national board of directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing, where he dealt with many issues involving the interaction of public policy, science, and ethics. He also served for four years as a member of the ethics committee of The Methodist Hospital in Houston.
Dr. Baldwin has contributed in the public domain as an advocate for public and private education from K-12 through university level and has a particular commitment to the teaching of science and technology in our schools. He has written in national newspapers on issues of public teacher recognition and compensation and has been active in the work of Episcopal schools. Dr. Baldwin was elected to the board of Harvard University for a six-year term and was selected as its vice-chair in 2000.
Dr. Baldwin is a member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (McKinney, Texas) and a former vestryman and board member at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church and School (New Haven, Connecticut). He has served as co-chair of the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award.