James M. Perrin, MD, FAAP

James M. Perrin, MD, is professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and former director of the Division of General Pediatrics at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children. He holds the John C. Robinson Distinguished Chair in Pediatrics at the MGH. He was president (2014) of the American Academy of Pediatrics, chair of its Committee on Children with Disabilities, and current chair of its Committee on Child Health Financing. He is also a past president of the Ambulatory (Academic) Pediatric Association. He directed the Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health for seven years. Dr. Perrin was founding editor of Academic Pediatrics. He has studied asthma, middle ear disease, children’s hospitalizations, health insurance, and childhood chronic illness and disabilities. A recent focus has addressed improving Medicaid for younger people in Massachusetts and nationally. He received a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research and was a member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality National Advisory Council. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has been on several national committees relating to children and youth with special health care needs and their families, including with the National Academies’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families. He currently co-chairs a NASEM committee on child and adolescent health care transformation. He has served on the boards of Family Voices, the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (University of North Carolina), and the Institute for Exceptional Care. He graduated from Harvard College and Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, followed by residency and fellowship at the University of Rochester and had faculty appointments at Rochester and Vanderbilt. While at Rochester, he developed a community health center in rural communities between Rochester and Buffalo.