James W. Hunt, Jr., PhD
James W. Hunt, Jr. has been
the president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts League of Community Health
Centers since 1979.
As both a state and national leader on community-based health care issues, Jim has helped to promote the value of health centers in improving access to quality health care and in reducing costs across the health system. More recently, Jim has helped steer Massachusetts’ health centers through the unchartered waters of health reform, where health centers are at the forefront of the Commonwealth’s efforts to implement near-universal coverage for its residents.
Over his 30-year tenure, Hunt has focused on stabilizing health center financing; expanding health center services to the homeless, seasonal farm workers, persons with disabilities and the elderly; developing the health center workforce; and replicating best practices across the health center network.
Hunt's passion in addressing the needs of the community-based health care workforce led him to collaborate with a local university to develop a first-in-the-nation community health certificate program for health center middle managers. The program, in its sixth year, helps to identify and train future leaders within the health center industry. More recently, with funding from Bank of America, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Partners HealthCare, Neighborhood Health Plan and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, Hunt helped to develop a loan repayment program for primary care providers who commit to practicing at community health centers.
In recognition of his leadership on behalf of community-based health care, Jim has sat on several state commissions and was appointed to the board of directors of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation in 2001.
On a national level, Hunt is certified as an association executive through the American Society of Association Executives; is the former president of the National Association of Community Health Centers; and was the 1996 recipient of the prestigious Johnson and Johnson Community Health Care Award for an innovative health outreach project for Greater Boston’s underserved women and children.
Hunt is an adjunct professor at the Sawyer School of Management at Suffolk University. In 2002, Jim received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the New England College of Optometry. And, in 2005, was chosen as the first Geiger Gibson Distinguished Visitor in Community Health Policy at the George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services. The award is given to an individual who has exhibited extraordinary and sustained leadership in community health policy.
