A new academic year has just begun, with a new group of students.
And we have a new group of leaders for the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Health Care.
Not everyone is new, to be sure, but we’ve tapped some new leaders and moved others into new roles and new titles.
• Marschall Runge, MD, PhD, is [...]

Fall has most assuredly arrived in Chapel Hill. The leaves are especially colorful this year, the morning air has been crisp more than once, and, as dean of the UNC School of Medicine I had the honor of delivering my fall address to the faculty.
This year provided ample reason for reflection. We have faced [...]

Our hearts go out to the patients and families of the horrific incident at the ConAgra plant in Garner.
Several hospitals in our area received patients from this tragedy, including our own Rex Healthcare. But those with the most critical injuries came to UNC, where the N.C. Jaycee Burn Center is the largest in the [...]

As a new strain of swine flu appears in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once again takes the lead.
The CDC, based in Atlanta, is uniquely qualified to deal with potential public health crises – whether infectious diseases or other challenges. Its epidemiologists and laboratory scientists work in close [...]

I have just returned from a large town hall meeting today in Greensboro, on the campus of NC A&T State University.

It was hosted by Governor Bev Perdue and my friend, Nancy-Ann DeParle, the head of the White House Office for Health Reform, and counselor to President Barak Obama. This regional health reform forum was attended by several hundred people, and was well covered by the news media.

I think it served a very useful purpose – to tell in compelling fashion what the problems are with our too flawed health care system in America.

Congratulations to my colleague and friend, Joe DeSimone.

A couple of days ago the Raleigh News and Observer named him their Tar Heel of the Year for 2008.

As the year 2008 comes to an end, I think many of us are glad to be done with it — it has been a year of huge economic challenges, major financial losses, and great frustrations. None of us planned to spend the past several months dealing with these issues. But we have to play the hand we are dealt, and whether we are talking about the world economy, the American financial or health care systems, or UNC Health Care — we simply have to do our best, and work hard every day.

I wanted to take some time to congratulate UNC’s own Dr. David Weber, this year’s recipient of the H. Fleming Fuller Award, an honor given annually in memory of the Kinston, N.C. physician and founding member of the UNC Hospitals’ board who died in 1986. The award recognizes doctors who demonstrate exemplary patient care, as [...]

I had the great privilege of giving an address to our medical staff at their semiannual meeting last Wednesday, and wanted to post my remarks here to share them even more broadly.
Several hundred UNC Health Care doctors and medical staff attended the meeting. It was a pleasure to meet many of them to discuss [...]

As I have written before, here at UNC our goal is to become the nation’s leading public academic medical institution – that means providing the best possible care with the latest evidence and the most compassion possible. I think we are moving toward achieving that goal and programs like the ones we instituted this year [...]