Wendy Brooks Barr, MD, MPH, MSCE

Dr. Barr is the program director and Designated Institutional Officer (DIO) at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center in Lawrence, MA.

She completed her residency at the Lawrence Family Medicine Residency in Lawrence, MA, and she earned her medical and public health degrees at the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston as part of their combined MD/MPH program. She completed a research and faculty development fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

What are your greatest professional interests?

Throughout my career I have most enjoyed teaching and working with residents and then seeing how they use that knowledge to positively impact their patients and communities. The passions that drive me professionally are to improve the quality, humanity, and access to care for women and their families – particularly around maternal and reproductive health. Over the last decade this has expanded for me to include how to develop and support a primary care workforce that can provide comprehensive care to all people.

What are your personal hobbies and interests?

I love to travel and explore new places and enjoy doing this with my husband and son. We particularly love exploring places in Europe. Our son has gotten the entire family involved in All American Soap Box Derby (where he drives a gravity powered car that he helped to build down a hill) and we now spend many weekends traveling to races or running our own soap box derby races in the Boston area and a week in the summer in Akron, OH at the World Championships. My relaxation activity is needlepoint – I am often working on a canvas at meetings.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about graduate medical education, what would it be?

I would change GME funding so that programs receive the funding directly and at adequate levels with incentives to train residents in a way that produces a primary care workforce for communities most in need.