Today, we are announcing that Robert S.D. Higgins, MD, MSHA, President, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Executive Vice President, Mass General Brigham, will transition to a new role as president and chief academic officer at RUSH University and chief academic officer, senior vice president for RUSH University System for Health. He will serve as the senior leader ensuring connection and alignment of the clinical programs across the university and entity hospitals. He will also be responsible for the success of RUSH’s academic colleges, with oversight of all aspects of the academic, student, administrative and external engagement activities of the university. As the leader of the academic enterprise, he will oversee and manage research across RUSH. A passionate advocate for research and innovation with a life-long commitment to training the next generation of exceptional people in healthcare, his new role at RUSH combines both of those enormous strengths.
“I’ve had the privilege and honor of serving my colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General Brigham over the past two years as we’ve worked together to advance our mission of providing compassionate and high-quality care, pursuing research and innovation, educating the next generation of health care providers and supporting our local and global community,” Higgins said. “I’m proud of the hard work that we’ve done together to advance our journey to become an integrated academic health system and look forward to watching the successes of Mass General Brigham in the future. I’m incredibly excited about the new opportunity before me in Chicago and returning to the place that my family and I call home.”
Before advancing to leadership roles at Ohio State and Johns Hopkins, Bob served as chair of the Department of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery at RUSH from 2003 to 2010.
“I am so very grateful for Bob’s leadership, support and partnership during a critical time in our journey to become a truly integrated academic health system. He played a key role in advancing our service line integration work and, more recently, in our system work to plan for the future of Mass General Brigham Cancer,” Anne Klibanski, MD, President and CEO, Mass General Brigham, said. “At the Brigham, he championed efforts to create and nurture a diverse and inclusive culture. Under his leadership, we expanded the Diversity and Inclusion leadership team at the Brigham and implemented a leadership development program that supports emerging leaders who are traditionally underrepresented in medicine. He worked tirelessly to support our partnerships with communities we serve. During his tenure, we celebrated a historic, $100 million gift — the largest in the Brigham’s history — establishing The Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation and underscoring our legacy and commitment to research and innovation. Bob elevated the Division of Urology to the Department of Urology and named its inaugural chair, Adam Kibel, MD, marking the first time in a decade that the hospital has established a new clinical department. He appointed several other outstanding leaders to key roles, including Chief Medical Officer Charles A. Morris, MD, MPH, Department of Medicine Chair Bruce Levy, MD, and Department of Pediatrics Chair Joanne Wolfe, MD. We are so thankful to Bob for his many outstanding and impactful contributions to BWH and the entire MGB community and wishing him all the best in this new opportunity.”
Following his departure, Giles Boland, MD, president of the Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization and executive vice president at Mass General Brigham, will serve as interim president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Boland, who is also the Philip H. Cook Distinguished Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, has been a valued member of our Mass General Brigham community for more than 30 years. Before serving as president of the BWPO, he was chair of Department of Radiology at the Brigham for four years and on the faculty at Mass General Hospital prior to that.
