On September 10, the Massachusetts General Hospital community gathered along with the Lunder family and members of the Lunder Foundation of Portland, Maine, longtime, dedicated donors to Mass General, to celebrate the opening of the new Peter L. Slavin, MD Academy for Applied Learning in Health Care. The new space, located in the historic Bulfinch Building in the heart of Mass General’s campus, is part of a bold initiative to harness the power of education to ensure the highest quality care for patients across the Mass General Brigham system and beyond. The dynamic new venue serves as an institutional home for teaching and learning and provides office spaces, conference rooms and collaboration areas, as well as an information hub and library.
“The Slavin Academy will provide collaborative space, infrastructure and resources to support teaching and learning across our entire community,” says James Gordon, MD, MPA, Mass General’s vice president of education and chief learning officer and inaugural incumbent of the David F. M. Brown, MD Endowed Education Academy Chair. “We are committed to investing in education to improve healthcare for all patients — this space will serve as a shared resource for all who work to advance the mission of the modern teaching hospital.”
The Slavin Academy is a core element of the Lunder Learning Initiative. Launched in 2022 with a transformational gift of $50 million from the Lunder Foundation, the Lunder Learning Initiative is aimed at reinventing healthcare education for the 21st century. The initiative enhances the training of healthcare professionals across roles and disciplines by supporting three coordinated education efforts: the Lunder Learning Hospital, the MGH Learning Endowment and the Peter L. Slavin, MD Academy for Applied Learning in Health Care, named in honor of Dr. Peter Slavin’s nearly two decades of leadership as hospital president. As the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the founder of the MGH Institute of Health Professions, education is a core pillar of the hospital’s four-part mission — patient care, research and discovery, teaching, and service to the community. The Lunder Learning Initiative is a renewal and expansion of this commitment to educating, supporting and mentoring current and future generations of local, national and international healthcare leaders.
“We support the patients of tomorrow by investing in research and education today,” says David F. M. Brown, MD, president of Academic Medical Centers at Mass General Brigham. “The historic innovations that occurred in 1846 in the Ether Dome, right next door to this space, educated the world, and we hope to harness that energy here at the Slavin Academy.”
The Future of Healthcare Education
Led by an interprofessional leadership team, the Slavin Academy’s work is guided by four inaugural committees: education scholarship, teaching and training, learning innovation, and educational resources and community affairs — all focused on harnessing education to ensure the highest quality care for every patient. The Slavin Academy ribbon-cutting event also marked the release of the inaugural 2024 State of Education Report. Created to better define, support, and promote the role of Education in achieving hospital and systemwide goals, the report is the result of a comprehensive institutional teaching and education survey and follow-up inventory assessment of educational programming across all professions and disciplines.
“This historic space, and the programs it makes possible, are designed to advance the culture of learning and discovery that has defined our community of care for over 200 years.” says Dr. Gordon.
We are grateful to the Lunder Foundation and family for their transformational gift, and for their faith, guidance and vision in strengthening our efforts in building and supporting a robust, comprehensive workforce — not just doctors and scientists, but also nurses, technicians and all healthcare providers,” says Dr. Brown. “This commitment — one of the largest ever to support education across the health professions — will enhance the training of future providers in all roles.”
To learn more about the Lunder Learning Initiative, contact us.
