Trustee Sam W. Ho, M76, Dies

Trustee Sam W. Ho, M76, a primary care physician, health justice advocate, and former chief medical officer at UnitedHealthcare, died on Jan. 31, surrounded by his loved ones. He was 75.

Throughout a 50-year career, Ho championed health justice, from small-scale neighborhood clinics to nationwide health policy. That commitment to health justice is reflected in his generous philanthropy to Tufts University School of Medicine, which began in earnest with his establishment of the Sam W. Ho Health Justice Scholars Programin 2013, and culminated in his final commitment to Tufts-the posthumous endowment of the Sam W. Ho Center for Health Care Transformation, which will be formally launched later this year in the School of Medicine.

Ho's goal of supporting the health of those in urban communities both locally and nationwide took him on a journey that included his co-founding of an inner-city clinic, his launching a Medicaid HMO and independent practice association, and his expansion of residency training through community hospital partnerships. Ho also led San Francisco's public health department during the height of the AIDS and crack cocaine epidemics and later took his commitment and skills to scale as a national medical officer at UnitedHealthcare, responsible for improving care for tens of millions of patients.

At each stage, the lessons he imparted were the same: compassionate, high-quality care begins with individual relationships, but lasting impact requires systems that support equity, quality, and accountability, according to Helen Boucher, dean of the School of Medicine and chief academic officer for Tufts Medicine.

"Sam's life's work will continue to inspire all of us to find innovative, game-changing ways to increase quality, lower costs, and improve patient outcomes and health care delivery," said Boucher. "And his extreme generosity will ensure that generations of physicians, patients, and citizens carry forward his devotion to providing care that is grounded in service while being both compassionate and accountable."

A Singular, Lofty Goal

Ho grew up in Honolulu, where his father provided medical care to underserved populations as a primary care physician in the island city's Chinatown neighborhood. Ho never envisioned he would follow in his father's footsteps, though he did follow a parallel path when he entered Northwestern University as a sociology major. Even as an undergraduate student, Ho was involved in several community-based initiatives throughout Chicago, from helping establish free health clinics in Chinatown to tutoring children.

It wasn't until after his sophomore year that everything changed. One minute he was enjoying an afternoon with friends, and the next he was following a trail of blood into an apartment building nearby where a man was lying injured from a head wound. He helped the man inside his apartment, cleaned his wound, and called an ambulance. From that moment on, he felt called to medicine.

After adding pre-med classes to his sociology courseload, Ho graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Northwestern University and enrolled in Tufts University School of Medicine. Ho found himself studying in the heart of Boston's Chinatown, where he continued working in community medicine by helping run free health clinics. Throughout his medical education, Ho remained unwaveringly committed to helping medically underserved communities.

His focus on health justice and equity continued through his residency at the University of California San Francisco, after which he opened a clinic in one of the city's most medically underserved neighborhoods. From the Chinatown neighborhoods of Honolulu in his youth to Chicago and Boston as a student, and on through to San Francisco, Ho saw firsthand the disparities in health-care services and quality for certain populations. Helping people on a community level was immensely fulfilling, but he felt he could have an even larger impact on health justice if he worked on a larger scale.

Over his career, the scale of Ho's impact grew. He became the deputy director of San Francisco's health department and the county health officer from 1988 to 1991. He later became the executive vice president and chief medical officer of PacifiCare Health Systems, a position he maintained when the company was acquired by UnitedHealthcare in 2005. In that role, his work impacted the health care of one in six Americans. Over the course of his career, Ho created the nation's first physician report card system and one of the first value-based payment programs.

Ho lived by a singular goal that he kept on a handwritten note: "To devote my life to making the most positive impact I can to improve American health care."

A Legacy of Support

Throughout his career, Ho remained a strong supporter of health justice research, education, and care programs at Tufts. In 2016, Ho established the Samuel W. Ho, M.D., M76 Scholarship Fund, which supports students interested in primary care within medically underserved communities.

A few years after establishing the Scholarship Fund, Ho endowed the Tufts Student Service Scholars program, with a gift of $5.56 million. Renamed the Sam W. Ho Health Justice Scholars Program (HJSP) in his honor, the program brings together a cohort of likeminded medical students and supplements their existing requirements with curriculum on critical health justice topics like cultural competency, health disparities, and patient empowerment. The HJSP, which includes clinical experiences and a longitudinal project in medically underserved communities, has already trained a few hundred students, with more than 15 entering a new cohort every year.

The Sam W. Ho Center for Health Care Transformation, to be established later this year, will address the lack of integration of the social determinants of health within our health care system. The center will aim to lead an interdisciplinary effort to achieve health justice by integrating medical and health education, research, and reform of health care delivery.

In addition to his service on the Board of Advisors for the School of Medicine, Ho also served the university as a trustee since being elected in 2019.

"Dr. Ho was an exceptional leader, physician, and human being," said Jeff Moslow, A86, A16P, A18P, chairman of the Tufts University Board of Trustees. "He was unparalleled in his dedication to transforming American health care in a way that better served the most vulnerable patients. That conviction is core to our university's values-values that he exemplified every day."

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