Thomas D. Sequist, MD, MPH, is an assistant professor of medicine and of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He currently practices general internal medicine at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates.

Dr. Sequist’s research agenda focuses on three areas: ambulatory quality improvement, racial disparities, and Native American health care. He works closely with the leadership of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, a large multispecialty group practice in eastern Massachusetts, on a wide spectrum of quality improvement projects involving health information technology, disease registries, organizational change, and patient and provider education. This work has focused on improving patient safety, preventive care, and chronic disease care. His research in quality improvement has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Harvard Risk Management Foundation.

Dr. Sequist is also actively involved in understanding how quality improvement strategies can be tailored to eliminate racial disparities in diabetes care. As part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation national program, Dr. Sequist led a randomized trial of cultural competency training and provider performance feedback to reduce disparities, and continues to explore alternative primary care-based methods of addressing inappropriate differences in health outcomes.  He is also a leader in studying Native American health care, working through funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to analyze quality of care within the Indian Health Service via patient and physician surveys combined with clinical performance data.

Dr. Sequist is committed to the advancement of Native Americans in the medical field and has served for over 10 years as a director of the Four Directions Summer Research Program at Harvard Medical School. This program offers American Indian undergraduate students a summer research experience, career advice, and long-term mentoring.

Dr. Sequist graduated from Cornell University with a BS in chemical engineering. He received his MD degree from Harvard Medical School, and his MPH degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Learn more about Dr. Sequist's work by viewing the following news briefs on 3/16/09, 6/16/08, 12/3/07, 11/18/07, 11/2/07, 5/15/07.