2003 Clinical and Health Services Research Award

Gary L. Freed, M.D., Ph.D.

What can one person accomplish in only five years at the University of Michigan Medical School? The answer is “a lot” if you’re Dr. Gary Freed.

Dr. Freed is the youngest endowed professor in the history of the Medical School, and in his first five years here has developed a major research unit, the Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Unit. He has greatly contributed to health care delivery to children on a national level. One colleague called Dr. Freed “one of the most gifted research entrepreneurs” he had ever met, and credited Dr. Freed with developing a pediatric research team that is “the leading pediatric health services research unit in the country.”

Dr. Freed’s research touches on some of the most important issues affecting children’s health today. He is recognized internationally as a leader in research on childhood immunization policies. He developed major research initiatives on pediatric workforce trends and policy, barriers to children’s access to health care, and the quality and cost of caring for children with special health care needs. Dr. Freed’s pioneering work on the role of fathers in the decision of feeding choice of newborns received a great deal of publicity in medical and lay literature (including JAMA, Glamour and Cosmo!). As a result of Dr. Freed’s work, fathers were finally included in breastfeeding education classes nationwide. Freed’s work in vaccine policy has influenced the systems of care for children in this country and abroad. Dr. Freed’s research in immunizations has resulted in changes to the national immunization schedule. His work on physician adoption of new immunization recommendations has had a direct impact on national immunization rates.

Dr. Freed’s commitments are not just to research. He mentors junior research faculty in his division and several master’s and Ph.D. candidates, as well as training fellows. He is principal investigator on the first and only NIH-funded T-32 fellowship in pediatric health services. Dr. Freed has also begun new initiatives to bring more under-represented minority physicians to the field of health services research. Most recently he has developed an elective which supports four minority resident physicians per year from around the US to come to Ann Arbor and spend a month with his research unit.

Dr. Freed joined the U-M Medical School in 1998 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has built research collaborations across the University, and through his leadership has secured funding from numerous sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the NIH, and the Institute of Medicine. He is an active member of several professional associations, has authored over 80 peer-review publications in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, and has been asked to present his research across the country and around the world.

Dr. Freed earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and his medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine where he also did his residency in Pediatrics. Dr. Freed earned a master’s degree in public health from UNC-Chapel Hill, and continued his postdoctoral training there as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar. He now serves as a core faculty member of the Clinical Scholars Program here at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Freed travels with a rubber chicken and takes pictures of it at different landmarks around the U.S. and the world. He has pictures of his chicken from such places as the Eiffel Tower, Windsor Castle, Graceland and the Parthenon.

Dr. Freed has been married for 18 years to Eileen Freed. They have three children: Ben, 14; Michele, 11; and Ariel, 8.