On Monday, Dr. Wen spoke at the Sixth Annual Lundberg Institute Lecture, “Public Health and Physician Activism: Lessons from Baltimore,” in San Francisco, California. The Lundberg Institute is a non-profit dedicated to creating a better patient-physician relationship by providing resources to promote evidence-informed health care that focus on patient centeredness. The Lundberg Institute intends for physicians to improve their skills in listening, oral and written communications, information technology, shared decision-making, and transparency in order to patients to receive the best care.

The lecture was moderated by George Lundberg, MD, founder of The Lundberg Institute, a Consulting Professor at Stanford University, and Editor-at-Large of Medscape. Dr. Lundberg is an army veteran who has 27 years combined experience as Editor in Chief of JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association), 10 AMA specialty journals, AMA News, Medscape, The Medscape Journal and e-Medicine from Web MD. A 1995 “pioneer” of the medical internet, Dr. Lundberg was later called “Online Health Care’s Medicine man” by the Industry Standard in 2000.

Previous speakers from the Annual Lundberg Institute Lecture series include:

• Elizabeth McGlynn, PhD, Director of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Effectiveness and Safety Research
• Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine in Residence at UCSF
• Kathryn McDonald, M.M., Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research at Stanford University
• Atul Gawande MD, Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School and at the Harvard School of Public Health.
• Peter V Lee JD, the Executive Director of “Covered California”
• Donald Berwick, MD, Former President and CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Former Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

At the lecture, Dr. Wen spoke about her experience as an emergency room physician and the importance public health. She shared successes in Baltimore, such as:

• B'more for Healthy Babies is a public-private partnership led by the Baltimore City Health Department, the Family League of Baltimore, and more than 100 partner agencies from the corporate, nonprofit, academic, donor, and government sectors. The initiative was founded to ensure that all babies are born at a healthy weight, full-term, and ready to thrive in healthy families. In 2015, Baltimore City experienced the lowest infant mortality rate on record: 8.4 per 1,000 live births—a 19 percent decline from 2014. Since the implementation of B'more for Healthy Babies, infant mortality in Baltimore City has declined by 38 percent, while the rate for African American infants has reduced by nearly 50 percent during same time period.
• In 2015, Dr. Wen issued a standing order to naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication. Since last year, more than 15,000 have been trained to administer the life-saving drug, and it has been used to save more than 530 lives.

Listen to Dr. Wen’s full lecture online.