Dr. James Crawford is Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Senior Vice President for Laboratory Services, in the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. This integrated 15-hospital system serves the Long Island and Staten Island portion of the greater New York metropolitan area. This health system also is partnering with Hofstra University for the founding of a new medical school, slated for matriculating its first students in July 2011. For that purpose, Jim is founding Chair of the Department of Pathology for the new Hofstra University School of Medicine.

Jim was born in Connecticut and received his bachelors degree from Dartmouth College and his MD and PhD degrees from Duke University. After interning in Pathology at Duke University Medical Center, he trained as an Anatomic Pathology Resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital 1983-1987, including a fellowship in Gastrointestinal Pathology and a stint in 1989 at the Royal Free Hospital in London as a Liver Pathology Research Fellow. From 1988 - 1996 he was faculty member in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, rising to the rank of Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. From 1987-1999 he held the position of Associate Professor and Director of the Program in Gastrointestinal Pathology at Yale University School of Medicine. He then moved to the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, FL, where for 9 years he served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine. For 8 of those years he also was President of the faculty clinical practice association, and Chair of the college's Executive Fiscal Advisory Committee.

Jim is well known as a Liver Pathologist and for his research in hepatobiliary pathophysiology. Since 1992 he also has been a reference pathologist for the field of Optical Imaging, and for the past 5 years has chaired the Pathology Working Group for the National Cancer Institute's Network for Translational Research in Optical Imaging. He has over 110 peer-review publications, along with 31 critical reviews, 45 chapters, and 3 books. In recent years he has served as President of the Association of Pathology Chairs, Chair of the Board of Directors for the College of American Pathologists "PathPAC" Political Action Committee, and member of the College's Council for Government and Professional Affairs. In November 2009, Jim became Chair-elect of the Council of Academic Societies of the Association of American Colleges, which includes serving a 2 year term on the AAMC Board of Directors. Through both the Association of Pathology Chairs and the College of American Pathologists, Jim has been heavily involved in advocacy for our profession, including reform of the Pathology Subspecialty Fellowship application process. For the past two years Jim has taken a leading role in positioning the specialty of Pathology to be part of the next era of "patient-centered" healthcare, particular with regards to Health Information Technology and the Patient-Centered Medical Home. In the last instance, since December 2008 Jim has been Co-Chair of the "Center for eHealth Information Adoption and Exchange" for the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a major national advocacy group for the Patient Centered Medical Home.

James Crawford and the USCAP:

For many years, Jim has been member of the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society, including serving from 2003-2009 in the Presidential track for this companion society. In 1997, Jim began his service for the academy journal, Laboratory Investigation, as part of the Editorial team at Yale University. After his move to the University of Florida in 1999, it was with some suspension of sanity that he applied for and was selected as the next Editor-in-Chief of the journal, for a five year term 2003-2008. Holding to the Yale model of an institution-based editorial team, he recruited three Associate Editors from the University of Florida (Raul Braylan, Laurence Morel, and Naohiro Terada), along with Senior Associate Editors from both Florida (Anthony Yachnis) and the University of Chicago (Jerrold Turner). All would agree that the most important recruit to the journal was Dr. Catherine Ketcham as Managing Editor. With Catherine's background in basic biomedical science and biotechnology, she brought extraordinary expertise to the editorial team. The five-year run of this editorial team set a solid new trajectory for the journal, both for service to submitting authors and for overall visibility of the journal. Along the way, Catherine and Jim also gave voice to editorial discussion of the science of knowledge in pathology, including detailed analyses of the role of Impact Factor in the lives of journals. The Florida-based editorial team "stood down" at the end of 2008, coincident with Jim's move to his new job at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. The performance of this Laboratory Investigation editorial team can best be summed in answer to a question asked of Jim in his first year of editorial leadership, by a USCAP council member: "When are you going to run out of gas?" The conclusion after five years is that, no, the Florida-based editorial group ran on all cylinders for the duration of a high-performance five year editorship.