Lucian Leape


Lucian Leape is a physician and professor at Harvard School of Public Health, who has been active in trying to improve the medical system to reduce medical error. In 1994 he had an article, "Error in Medicine," published in JAMA. In 1997, he testified before a subcommittee of the US Senate with his recommendations for improving medical safety.
Leape has spent his recent working life campaigning for change in the American healthcare system. He travels the world to give talks and lectures, influencing many of the world's brightest medics.
Leape is the Chair of the Lucian Leape Institute at the National Patient Safety Foundation. The Institute, founded in 2007, is charged with defining strategic paths and calls to action for the field of patient safety, offering vision and context for the many efforts underway within health care, and providing the leverage necessary for change at the system level. Its members comprise national thought leaders with a common interest in patient safety whose expertise and influence are brought to bear as the Institute calls for the innovation necessary to expedite the work and create significant, sustainable improvements in culture, process, and outcomes critical to safer health care.
Leape earned the Eagle Scout award as a youth and has been recognized by the Boy Scouts of America as a Distinguished Eagle Scout.
He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1959 after receiving an AB from Cornell University in 1952.