
Blair L. Sadler
J.D.
Board Member
Blair L Sadler is a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and a member of the faculty at the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management. He teaches and writes about the power of transparency and leadership in crises. He served as president and CEO of the Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego from 1980 to 2006.
Fifty years ago, he and his physician brother, Alfred, were very involved in the drafting of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act as consultants to the Uniform Law Commission. The law was approved in 1968 and was adopted in all 50 states in three years. They have written extensively about the legal, ethical, and policy issues involved in organ donation, including an article providing a 50 year perspective on the law in the Hastings Center Report. He served on the board of the Hastings Center from 2006 to 2018 and is a founding fellow of the Center.
Previously, he served as a medical-legal specialist at the National Institutes of Health, on the faculty at the Yale University School of Medicine and codirector of the Yale PA program, as a senior officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and as a senior executive at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation. He is a member of the board of directors of Health Care without Harm, an environmental health advocacy organization. He is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He clerked for two judges on the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
He is the co-author of leading articles relating to organ and tissue donation, evidence-based architectural design, and health care quality improvement, as well as three books: Transforming the Health Experience through the Arts, The Physician’s Assistant Today and Tomorrow, and Emergency Medical Care: The Neglected Public Service.
He chairs the Board of Access Youth Academy, a San Diego nonprofit organization devoted to transforming the lives of underserved youth through combining individualized academic advancement, health and wellness, community service, and leadership skills with the sport of squash.
He lives in La Jolla, California, with his wife, Georgia, who is a cancer researcher focusing on cultural barriers to care, and is a professor in the department of surgery at the UCSD School of Medicine.
Posts by Blair L. Sadler
- Bioethics Forum Essay
Organ Donation and Transplantation in the U.S.: 50 Years of Success, Strategies for Improvement
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, a landmark law adopted 50 years ago this summer, has provided a sound and stable legal platform on which to base an effective nationwide organ donation and transplantation system, as we discuss in our article in the current issue of the Hastings Center Report. We work...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Can Social Media Increase Transplant Donation and Save Lives?
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayWhile at the National Institutes of Health in 1967 and 1968, we were involved in the design and drafting of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, in partnership with the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and with the support of several health care organizations. In drafting the model law, we had three m...Read the Post
Related Posts
- Page
Inaugural 2021-22 Sadler Scholars
Read the PostPageSadler Scholars are a select group of doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities underrepresented in this field in the United States. Admission to this initiative of The Hastings Center’s visiting scholar program is by application.Read the Post - Hastings Center News
Applications Open for Sadler Scholars
Read the PostHastings Center NewsThe Hastings Center is accepting applications for the 2022-23 Sadler Scholars, a select group of up to six doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities underrepresented in this field in the United States. Deadline: March 14.Read the Post - Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes First Sadler Scholars
Read the Post - Page
Sadler Scholars
Read the PostPageSadler Scholars are a select group of doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities underrepresented in this field in the United States. Admission to this initiative of The Hastings Center’s visiting scholar program is by appli...Read the Post - Page
The Blair and Georgia Sadler Fund to Support Socially Just Health Policy
Read the Post - Hastings Center News
The Blair and Georgia Sadler Fund to Support Socially Just Health Policy
Read the Post - Page
The Hastings Center Beneficence Society
Read the PostPageCredited by many as having founded the field of bioethics, The Hastings Center has invested more than 50 years addressing complex challenges at the intersection of health, science, and technology—including issues of aging populations, health care access, growing financial inequality...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Evaluating Recommendations to Increase Organ Donation
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayWhile the U.S. system of organ donation and transplantation is in a state of growth for the fifth year in a row, the call for new strategies to accelerate that progress has never been more robust as the critical need for transplantable organs continues to far exceed the supply. In an article in the M...Read the Post