Former Dean Richard Krugman, MD, Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

Richard D. Krugman, MD, has been chosen for the 2025 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows (RWJF) program Lifetime Achievement Award.

Krugman, distinguished professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, was a member of the RWJF class of 1980-1981. Before leaving for Washington D.C. for the fellowship, Krugman worked as the director of the Colorado Area Health Education Center (AHEC) program and then was asked by Henry Kempe, MD, to direct the Kempe National Center for Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect, which Kempe started in the Department of Pediatrics in 1972. With the center, Krugman led efforts in research, training, and program development to prevent and treat child abuse and neglect.

Following the fellowship, Krugman served on the RWJF Health Policy Fellows program advisory board from 1985 to 1989 and 1995 to 1999.

“Being selected for this award was a complete surprise. I am truly honored, and very grateful to the individuals who nominated me,” Krugman said of the award.

The award announcement was made Oct. 18 by the RWJF program, which is administered by the National Academy of Medicine with funding support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since 2008, the lifetime achievement award has honored RWJF program alumni whose careers reflect sustained and exceptional contributions to the field of health policy.

“Through his work as a physician, professor, and advocate, Dr. Krugman has advanced the goals that define our program: using health policy to improve lives and strengthen communities,” Gregg Margolis, Director of the RWJF Health Policy Fellows program, said in a statement. “We are honored to recognize his enduring contributions to protecting children’s health and his remarkable commitment to service.”

In 1992, almost 20 years after joining CU, Krugman began his official tenure as dean of the School of Medicine, a position he served until 2015. As dean, Krugman oversaw the School of Medicine’s move to the CU Anschutz campus in Aurora, curriculum reform, and the development of several programs that have come to define the CU Anschutz School of Medicine today.

From 1990 to 1992, Krugman served as interim dean, a job he had not intended to take due to plans for a research sabbatical in Belgium. It turned into one of the longest-running deanships in U.S. medical school history.

In 2005, Krugman was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, where he’d served on various committees and projects, including the report  “Confronting Chronic Neglect: The Education and Training of Health Professionals on Family Violence.”

In many ways, Krugman says the RWJF fellowship was a springboard for the work that has defined his career.

“During the fellowship year, I had the opportunity to work on the Senate Finance Committee with Sens. Dave Durenberger and Bob Dole. It was an amazing experience, and I learned a lot about how federal health policy played out,” Krugman said. “That knowledge has been valuable not just in the child abuse field, but during the years I served as dean and on the board of the Association of American Medical Colleges.”

Currently, Krugman serves on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council of Councils, which advises the NIH director, and as board chair for the National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect, which he co-founded in 2017.