John Z. Ayanian, MD, MPP, an HCP associate professor of health care policy, spent a week in Japan at the invitation of the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Ayanian presented an invited lecture on “Clinical Research to Improve Quality of Care and Health Outcomes,” advised Kyoto University faculty and graduate students on their program in outcomes research, and met with government health officials in Tokyo.

In a series of productive meetings with officials from the Japanese health ministry, Dr. Ayanian participated in discussions of new policies the Japanese government is developing related to clinical outcomes research and to primary health care. He presented recent policy developments on these topics in the United States and provided input on new approaches under consideration in Japan.

Dr. Ayanian’s host at Kyoto University was Shunichi Fukuhara, MD, MSc, a professor of epidemiology and health care research at that institution. In the early 1990s, Dr. Fukuhara was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.