Press Releases

April 3, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Julie Rosen, Executive Director
617-724-1778

James Roosevelt, Jr. Appointed to Kenneth B. Schwartz Center Board

 
Boston – The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the relationship between patients and caregivers, has appointed James Roosevelt, Jr. to its board of directors.

Roosevelt is president and chief executive officer of Tufts Health Plan, where he has also served as senior vice president and general counsel.

“We are thrilled to have Jim on our board, as he is one of the most respected health care leaders in Massachusetts and beyond,” said Julie Rosen, executive director of the Schwartz Center, which is housed at Massachusetts General Hospital. “One of the reasons he is such an effective leader is that he combines a formidable background in health care law and public policy with a profound concern for individual patients and how their needs are being met. It’s a powerful combination that the Schwartz Center board will benefit greatly from.”

“The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center builds connections between caregivers and patients to improve the patient experience in health care,” said Roosevelt. “Its work is an important reminder that our decisions as health care leaders affect patients every day. I am honored to join the board of the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center and help advance its agenda of compassionate care.”

Before joining Tufts Health Plan in 1999, Roosevelt was the associate commissioner for the Social Security Administration in Washington, D.C. He has also served as chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Democratic party and is co-chair of the Rules and By-Laws Committee of the Democratic National Committee.  He also spent 10 years as a partner at Choate, Hall and Stewart in Boston. He is past chairman of the boards of trustees of the Massachusetts Hospital Association and Mount Auburn Hospital as well as past president of the American Health Lawyers Association.

About the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center

Shortly before his death from lung cancer in September 1995, Kenneth B. Schwartz established a Center dedicated to strengthening the relationship between patients and caregivers.  The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center is an autonomous, nonprofit organization with a mission to support and advance compassionate health care in which caregivers, patients and their families relate to one another in a way that provides hope to the patient, support to caregivers, and sustenance to the healing process.  The Center’s most successful and fastest growing program, the Schwartz Center Rounds, operates at 108 sites in 26 states.