I recently discussed my career in health care, particularly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the organization’s CDC Connects internal newsletter. I talked about what and who inspired me to enter the field of public health, and my time at the CDC. To read the article, click here.
Next week I am traveling to Nicaragua with UNC School of Medicine faculty member Doug Morgan, MD. Professor Morgan is a gastroenterologist, and has long done research in collaboration with partners in Nicaragua and Honduras. We are visiting several sites, including the University of Nicaragua, Leon, and its Center for Epidemiology and Health, under the direction of Dean Rodolfo Pena.
We will be joined on this trip by our colleagues Dr. Pia MacDonald from the UNC School of Public Health and Dr. Nathan Thielman of Duke University. Our Global Health partnerships are substantial and growing even more so.
More updates next week.
I wanted to share with you a radio interview I did with Don Curtis, chairman and CEO of Curtis Media Group and one of our UNC Health Care board members. We talked about my role at UNC Health Care, as well as the health care challenges facing our state.
To listen to the interview, click here.
For this month’s edition of Health Affairs, the preeminent health policy journal, I was asked to contribute my thoughts on the health care reform debate engendered by the presidential election season. I addressed the same topic in this journal in 1989 while on the White House staff. As I reflect on my views some 18 years ago, I am struck by how little has changed in the health reform debate.
Presidential elections place important issues front and center for the American people. Over the next 12 months, we will hear varying plans to make fundamental reforms to our health care system. The discussions on the campaign trail and at family kitchen tables will be helpful in defining hypothetical changes to a system that is in need of major reforms. However, when the dust settles, will we experience fundamental reform? I think not.
“More of the same” is the theme of the article. But I don’t mean that cynically. While politics plays an important role, I firmly believe that advances in medicine, science and technology will do more to reform our health care system than anything that may happen in Washington.
As with any complex issue, there’s always another view. I encourage you to share your thoughts on the subject.
To read the full article in PDF format, visit http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/26/6/1551.
To access the article I wrote in 1989, click here.
This week I had the privilege of visiting with Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika, the President of the Republic of Malawi. Irving Hoffman, who directs the UNC Project in Malawi, and I traveled to New York, and met with the President there. He was in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.
At our meeting we described UNC’s long-standing and far-reaching activities in his country, including patient care, teaching and research efforts. I told him about my trip to Malawi in May and June of this year, and I gave him a copy of my blog entries that describe the visit.
He welcomed us warmly and told us of his desire to expand and deepen our partnership work.
I invited him to come to UNC and to North Carolina, so that we can show him our Carolina hospitality.
Global health surely involves governments and institutions, but fundamentally it is about people — people working together to improve the human condition.
Improving safety and quality of care for our patients is usually difficult work that often goes unsung. That is why I was so excited to see our hospitals named among the 41 top hospitals in the U.S. for safety and quality for the second year running.
This recognition from The Leapfrog Group, a leading national health care quality organization, is evidence that we continue to make tremendous progress in our safety and quality efforts. Our hard work in improving the quality of care at UNC is getting attention – and truly making a difference.
In awarding us this honor, Leapfrog certifies that we are meeting its highest quality standards, which evolve each year to keep pace with important advancements like electronic medical records and computerized physician order entry. We are ahead of the curve – and that’s where I plan for us to stay. In fact, we were the only hospital in the Carolinas to make Leapfrog’s 2007 list after more stringent quality measures were added to this year’s survey.
The recognition is great. It feels even better seeing the company we keep among those recognized with this award. My thanks go to the entire UNC Health Care team for their hard work to improve continuously the quality and safety of care for our patients.
To read more about Leapfrog’s Top Hospitals Award, please click here.
Below is a letter to the editor that was printed Tuesday in the News & Observer from Dr. Shelley Earp and me on the University Cancer Research Fund. Dr. Earp is director of UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
We had a news conference at the Legislative Building in downtown Raleigh last week to thank legislators and Gov. Mike Easley for making this generous and transformational gift possible. With this support, UNC is poised to become the leading public cancer program in the country – both in cancer research and in translating that research into public health and community practice.
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Cancer center kudos
With the recently passed state budget, our state’s leaders have made a remarkable investment, one that will no doubt touch every life in North Carolina.
By establishing the University Cancer Research Fund, North Carolina is now one of only a few states with a dedicated comprehensive cancer research fund. This transformative investment of $25 million this year, growing to $50 million per year beginning in 2009, will help us become the nation’s best public cancer center.
Cancer afflicts one in three North Carolinians. Now our loved ones, friends and neighbors can be assured that the best research and care in the world will be available here in North Carolina. It won’t be available only to those of means. It will be available for all of our citizens.
It is unfortunately inevitable that someone you know will someday battle cancer. This monumental step for our state is an investment in the pursuit of a cure and in the knowledge that the best cancer care in the world will be available right here at home.
H. Shelton Earp III, M.D.
Director, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology
William L. Roper, M.D.
CEO, UNC Health Care
Dean, UNC School of Medicine
Chapel Hill
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/tuesday/opinion/story/662295.html
This weekend I am in Annapolis, Maryland, meeting with a number of bright, energetic, young leaders.
I am a member of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, and each year at this time we meet to get to know the national finalists in the White House Fellows program, and to make recommendations to the President on who should be the next class of White House Fellows.
This unique program, which was created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, selects about a dozen people a year to spend a year working as paid special assistants to cabinet secretaries or senior White House officials. The fellows come from all parts of our country — business, education, medicine, the military, etc. It is a non-partisan program, and it seeks individuals who have shown real leadership promise — in their professions and in their communities — early in their careers. Most fellows are in their late 20s or early 30s.
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We are back in Lilongwe, after a MAGNIFICENT weekend in the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. It was even better than we had thought. Irving Hoffman gave us wonderful advice on what to do for a short (three days and two nights) holiday.
We left here on Friday morning, all in order, and on the way to the airport, we discovered that we did not have one of our passports!
We stopped by the side of the road, looked through the small bags that we packed for the weekend (we left most of the stuff at the guesthouse in Lilongwe, where we are back for tonight). No passport.
William L. Roper, MD, MPH
CEO, University of North Carolina
Health Care System
