James M. Perrin, MD, is professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and associate chair of pediatrics at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children.  He holds the John C. Robinson Distinguished Chair in Pediatrics at the MGH.  Past director of the MGHfC Division of General Pediatrics, he also founded the MGH Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy and its associated research fellowship program and directed the center for over 15 years.  He is past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, former chair of its Committee on Children with Disabilities, and past president of the Ambulatory (Academic) Pediatric Association.  For the American Academy of Pediatrics, he also co-chaired a committee to develop practice guidelines for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and then a group advising the AAP on the implementation of the guidelines; he co-chaired the Task Force on Pediatric Practice Change. His research has examined asthma, middle ear disease, children’s hospitalization, health insurance, and childhood chronic illness and disabilities.  His recent work includes helping to organize and convene the Massachusetts Child and Adolescent Health Initiative, which worked closely with Massachusetts Medicaid over the past five years to substantially expand Medicaid programs for children, youth, and families in Massachusetts.  He has published over 250 research papers, chapters, and commentaries.  For 10 years, he headed the Clinical Coordinating Center (based at the MGH) for the national Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network and directed the federally-funded Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health, a multisite collaborative aiming to improve evidence-based health care for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.  He also directed the Evidence Working Group reporting to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau for the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders and Genetic Diseases in Newborns and Children.  Dr. Perrin was the founding editor of Academic (Ambulatory) Pediatrics, the journal of the Academic Pediatric Association, which he led for 10 years.

Dr. Perrin is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, a member of the National Academies of Sciences Board on Children, Youth, and Families, and has participated in many Institute of Medicine committees on maternal and child health, health care reform, health care quality, long-term care, disability, and children’s mental health.  He was a member of the National Commission on Childhood Disability and the Disability Policy Panel of the National Academy of Social Insurance.  His experience includes two years in Washington working on rural primary care development and migrant health.  After his fellowship at the University of Rochester, he developed and ran a rural community health center in farming communities between Rochester and Buffalo.