Rich Roberts
Rich Roberts is Professor and past Chair in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. A family physician and attorney, he has practiced in Belleville, a rural community of 1900 people, since 1987. In addition to teaching students, residents, and fellows, Doctor Roberts provides the full scope of family medicine services: he delivers babies, cares for patients of all ages, performs endoscopy and minor surgery, and attends patients in the hospital, including those in intensive care units.
For a decade, he served on and chaired the Wonca Working Party on Quality in Family Medicine. As Honorary Treasurer and a member of the Wonca Executive since 2004, Dr. Roberts helped develop financial reporting and accountability strategies, clarify Wonca’s legal rights to ICPC-2, and open dialogues with Google and the World Patient Safety Alliance. He represented Wonca to the Global High Blood Pressure Stakeholders Group.
Professor Roberts has taught in 40 countries on 5 continents, including the last 5 Wonca World Conferences. He supervised medical student exchanges between the U.S. and West Africa. Working with the College of Family Physicians of Canada, he conceived, organized, and led the six-country, week-long SOAR Family Medicine International Colloquium to share ideas on the renewal of family medicine, which was convened in Toronto in September 2006. He led U.S. delegations on primary care to Brazil, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, and was a member of U.S. delegations to six WHO International Consultations on urinary health.
Dr. Roberts is a Past President of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). He is a Trustee on the Boards of the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation and the Interstate Postgraduate Medical Association. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Patient Safety Foundation and the National Advisory Council of the California Health Benefits Review Program. He served on guidelines panels of the AAFP, American College of Cardiology, American Pain Society, American Urological Association, United States Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, and World Health Organization.
Possessing a wide range of health care leadership experience, Dr. Roberts was a founding officer of the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, the faculty practice for nearly 1000 university physicians. He served as an associate medical director for two health plans, and as a director on the boards of a health maintenance organization and a statewide independent practice association. Early in his career, he was the managing partner in a four-physician group in a very rural and underserved community.
Professor Roberts’s scholarship has focused on the development of decision support tools to improve clinical care, especially in the areas of primary care renewal, quality improvement, maternity health, medico-legal issues, and urinary health. He has authored more than 130 publications, been an investigator on a dozen grants, and given more than 500 presentations.
Rich and his wife Laura, an exercise physiologist and fitness consultant, have 4 children, aged 15-25 years. He enjoys travel and time with his family, movies, reading, writing, and volunteering at MEDIC, a free clinic run by medical students.