New Fellowship Established

President Neil L. Rudenstine announced yesterday the establishment of the Thomas O. Pyle Fellowship Fund in Harvard Medical School's Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention.

The Pyle fellow will be a member of the newly-created Ambulatory Care Department and will participate in University-wide efforts to improve health care practice in the U.S.

"We expect that the Thomas O. Pyle Fellow will bring to this position the same deep devotion to changing our health care system," Harvard Community Health Plan Chair Maurice Lazarus said in a statement.

"[We expect] the same broad vision of how the economic, medical and political forces of health care must be harnessed for the common good," he continued.

The fellowship was created in honor of Pyle, president and chief executive officer of Harvard Community Health Plan from 1978 to 1991. Pyle advocated universal health care coverage and medical care research.

Under Pyle's leadership, the Harvard Community Health Plan became one of the nation's most successful health maintenance organizations and is currently recognized as "a benchmark for the highest standards of quality," Rudenstine stated yesterday's press release.

Pyle is currently the chair of Inter-Study, a health-care policy research organization, and a member of the Jackson Hole Group, an organization devoted to national health-care reforms.

The endowment of the fellowship will be provided by the Harvard Community Health Plan Foundation, which supports teaching, research and community service related to health care.

The new ambulatory care department, a collaboration between the Medical School and the Harvard Community Health Plan, will develop educational programs for students, residents, fellows and practicing physicians.

The programs will focus on primary care ambulatory practice, health promotion, preventive medicine, risk assessment and the effects of nutritional and environmental factors on health.