The Primary Care Collaborative (PCC) is thrilled to honor Susan Edgman-Levitan, Executive Director of the John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital, as our latest Primary Care Champion. A former PCC Board Member PCC leader, Edgman-Levitan has advocated for advanced, whole-person primary care throughout her distinguished career.
Edgman-Levitan reflected on her lifelong commitment to primary care, noting that her career in the field helped shape her broader work in patient-centered care. She argued that comprehensive primary care is foundational to a high-performing health system and carries no tradeoffs, with consistent evidence highlighting its critical role in improving health outcomes.
She then discussed her formative training in family medicine and early work in rural North Carolina. There, she learned that delivering whole-person care requires understanding patients’ lived realities, including their socio-environmental circumstances. These experiences reinforced her belief that long-term relationships, trust and community engagement are key to achieving comprehensive primary care.
Edgman-Levitan then talked about policy, stressing that primary care remains significantly underfunded. It receives only a small fraction of overall health care spending, lower than 5% in many states. She warned that incremental investments are insufficient; meaningful improvement requires sustained, substantial funding as well as greater workforce support.
Offering advice to emerging leaders, she encouraged clinicians to become informed advocates for primary care while also actively seeking to improve care delivery within their own practices. She noted that supportive work environments benefit both clinicians and patients, cautioning against “learned helplessness” in the face of deep systemic challenges.
When asked about changes she’d make to the United States’ health care system, one thing Edgman-Levitan pointed to was universal health coverage. Expanding access, she stated, would build lasting patient-clinician relationships and relieve administrative burdens that contribute to clinician burnout.