Win a full scholarship to the Forum: Are you a full-time health professions student with a strong interest in improvement? Write an essay about a health care quality improvement project (either one you’ve done or one you plan to do) and apply for the David Calkins Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship covers the entire cost of General Conference fees and includes a stipend for travel and lodging. To learn more, download the Calkins Scholarship information sheet. The application deadline is Friday, October 16.
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http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/ConferencesAndSeminars/NationalForumStudents2009.htm?TabId=10About Dr. Calkins (from the Boston Globe, April 16, 2006)
Dr. David Calkins, worked in medicine, public policyBy Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | April 16, 2006
In life, and particularly when facing death, David Calkins just didn't break his stride.
''He really lived more in his 57 years than most people do in 87 years," said his sister, Kathy Calkins Horne of Tulsa, Okla. ''He went at a pace that many people couldn't keep up with. Even when you walked down the street with him you couldn't keep up. He was just full speed ahead all the time."
He kept up the pace during the final 2 1/2 years of his life, after receiving a terminal diagnosis. In some ways, he preferred to live with cancer as if were a chronic illness.
''This guy would have brain surgery and be back at his desk in seven days," said Dr. Donald Berwick, president and CEO of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge. ''I'd say, 'David, what are you doing here?' And he'd say, 'Well, it was time to get back.' "
Dr. Calkins, a former associate dean at Harvard Medical School who helped the healthcare institute design and implement a campaign to prevent 100,000 avoidable deaths in hospitals, died April 7 at his Concord home. Last fall, he had run the last of more than 20 New York City Marathons -- the final two after his diagnosis.
A devoted physician, educator, husband, and father, Dr. Calkins traveled in a wide array of professional circles in which his respect for colleagues made him a favorite.
''There was a way he could share his ideas and be in the presence of others and be ever so humble," said his wife, Susan Rice of Concord.
''I can never remember him having a cross word with anyone," said his younger brother, John, a physician in Kansas City, Mo.
Said Berwick, ''Everyone comments on this: When he was with you, he was with you completely."
The oldest of three children, David Ross Calkins was born in Kansas City, Kan. His father, a physician, had chaired the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Kansas. As a youth, he embraced the passions for medicine and public policy that would define his career, often becoming so deeply engrossed in the newspaper over breakfast that it was a challenge to engage him in conversation.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1970 and went to Harvard Medical School. He graduated in 1975 and simultaneously received a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government.
In 1978 he joined the Carter administration. More than two decades before it became a hot-button issue in the Clinton administration, Dr. Calkins was trying to figure out how to bring healthcare to everyone in the country.
''Growing up, he was a major Democrat," his wife said. ''He'd always been interested in not just the day-to-day patient-care issues, but the long-term patient-care issues."
When Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid, Dr. Calkins returned to Boston. During various periods over the next 15 years he was head of the internal medicine division at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, taught at Harvard's medical school and school of public health, and directed the university's master's program in health policy management.
Diana Walsh, president of Wellesley College, was a Kellogg national fellow with Dr. Calkins in the late 1980s.
''He was a man of deep and enduring values," she said. ''He loved learning new things. He had an insatiable appetite for knowledge."
Dr. Calkins returned to Kansas in 1996 as associate dean and then senior associate dean at the University of Kansas Medical School. Then it was back to Harvard Medical School in 1999, where he was associate dean for clinical programs. The flag at the school flew at half-staff Friday, a week after his death.
He joined the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in 2003 as a George W. Merck fellow. The following year, the Society of General Internal Medicine awarded him its outstanding achievement award.
''One of the things that mattered most to him was mentoring medical students," Rice said.
She and her husband met at Beth Israel, where she was a clinical social worker. They shared a deep commitment to patient care.
But Dr. Calkins was also deeply committed to the kinds of things that don't show up on a resume.
''He had these great passions," Walsh said. ''He had a passion for dancing. He loved '60s music, fishing, running."
''All the women in all the groups he was involved with knew that he was a major person on the dance floor until 2 in the morning," his wife said, ''but to first meet him you would never know that."
An avid Red Sox fan, Dr. Calkins would keep the team's website tiled on his computer screen at work whenever a game was in progress. Diagnosed in late 2003 with a type of brain cancer that is always terminal, Dr. Calkins pushed the statistical envelope. The team's victories the following year seemed like a metaphor for his success as a patient.
''When the Red Sox won the pennant, it was like some sort of message from the baseball gods," Walsh said.
Meanwhile, he ramped up his already deep involvement in life, staying up late in the nights before surgery to finish work for the institute and devoting himself to his son, Christopher, with whom he traveled to games and fished the Yellowstone River in Montana.
''He was focused on creating lots of wonderful memories for his son," his sister said.
''As his own life was slipping through his fingers, it was so clear who he was and what he cared about and what he stood for," Walsh said. ''He taught us how to live and he taught us how to face our deaths, with courage and with hope and with his commitment to how to make the most of every remaining day."
In addition to his wife, son, and siblings, Dr. Calkins leaves his mother, Emily, of Kansas City.
