Bob Phillips, MD, MSPH

Dr. Phillips directs the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care which aims to create space in which patients, health professionals, payers, and policymakers can work to renegotiate the social contract. The center will also seek to define value across the healthcare spectrum, how to measure it, how to improve it, and how to engage and develop leaders. Dr. Phillips is also responsible for overseeing the American Board of Family Medicine’s (ABFM) research and related collaborations, as well as the policy relationships related to family medicine and primary care.

Prior to being named executive director of the center in 2018, Dr. Phillips was the ABFM Vice President for Research and Policy. From 2004 until 2012, Dr. Phillips was the director of the Robert Graham Center, a health policy research center in Washington, DC.

Dr. Phillips currently practices one day each week in a community-based residency program in Fairfax, Virginia, and is Professor of Family Medicine at Georgetown University and Virginia Commonwealth University. He previously served on the American Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education, as president of the National Residency Matching Program, and as vice chair of the US Council on Graduate Medical Education. Dr. Phillips currently serves as co-chair of the Population Health Subcommittee and as a member of the executive committee of the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics. He served as a Fulbright Specialist to the Netherlands in 2012 and New Zealand in 2016.

Dr. Phillips has deep experience in designing and implementing health services research pertinent to policy development and a history of prodigious productivity. His passion for underserved populations is born of growing up in a rural community that is both a Health Professions Shortage Area and Medically Underserved Area, currently served by two Rural Health Clinics. It was bolstered by working in a Federally Qualified Health Center embedded in a Federal Housing Project. Dr. Phillips’ research and policy experience led him to his selection by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to serve on a Federal Negotiated Rule Making Committee for the redesignation of shortage and underservice areas. He consults at local, state, national, and international levels, and serves as a role model for aspiring students and fellows.

Dr. Phillips was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2010 and has served the National Academies in several capacities since. In 2012, the health policy research fellowship co-sponsored by the Robert Graham Center and Georgetown University was renamed the Robert L. Phillips, Jr. Health Policy Fellowship. He was named to the University of Florida College of Medicine Hall of Fame in 2016.

Dr. Phillips is a graduate of the Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he was a varsity swimmer and student government president. After graduation from the University of Florida College of Medicine with honors for special distinction, he completed training in family medicine at the University of Missouri in 1998, followed by a two-year fellowship in health services research and public health. Dr. Phillips is active in Scouting, including a term as Scoutmaster, and helped organize a community effort to reduce teen suicide risk in Fairfax, Virginia.