Former Health and Human Services Secretary Speaks at UMKC

Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, visited UMKC.

Sullivan was the honored guest at Diastole Scholar’s Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was the keynote speaker at the Dr. Reaner and Mr. Henry Shannon Lecture in Minority Health at the School of Medicine. His speech was “The State of Diversity: 1965-2010.” It is the 10th anniversary of the Shannon Lecture.

“We are delighted and honored to welcome Dr. Sullivan to UMKC School of Medicine, along with our colleagues from medical schools across the state,” said Steven L. Kanter, M.D., dean of the UMKC School of Medicine.

Sullivan is chairman of the board of the National Health Museum in Atlanta, which has the goal of improving the health of Americans by enhancing health literacy and advancing healthy behaviors. Sullivan also is chairman of the Washington D.C.-based Sullivan Alliance to Transform the Health Professions. During his visit, Missouri medical school faculty met to form a Sullivan Alliance in the state. The Sullivan Alliance is an outgrowth of two group reports in the early 2000s that produced more than 60 recommendations to key stakeholders in the U.S. health care system to address the need for a greater diversity among the health care workforce. Leaders of the two efforts established the Sullivan Alliance to encourage formal collaborations among higher education, academic medical centers and health professions schools in developing a diversified workforce.

“We have a great opportunity for the state of Missouri,” said Rebecca R. Pauly, M.D., UMKC professor of Medicine and Biomedical Health and Informatics. “Leaders from UMKC, University of Missouri-Columbia, Saint Louis University and Washington University are reaching beyond our institutional silos to collaborate and construct programs focused on improving the diversity of the healthcare workforce. We are doing this through the creation of a Missouri Alliance.”

While serving as chair of the Florida Alliance from 2007-2013, Pauly witnessed engagement and synergy among institutions there.

“This results in the betterment of higher education, medical centers, the healthcare industry, minority-serving institutions and community colleges to create impactful and sustainable initiatives,” Pauly said.

With the exception of Sullivan’s tenure as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993, Sullivan was president of Morehouse School of Medicine — the first predominantly black medical school established in the 20th century — for more than two decades. In 2002, he retired and was appointed president emeritus. He served as chair of the President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from 2002 to 2009, and was co-chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS from 2001 to 2006.

In his cabinet position appointed by President George H.W. Bush, Sullivan’s efforts to improve the health and health behaviors of Americans included:

  • Leading the effort to increase the NIH budget from $8 billion in 1989 to $13.1 billion in 1993
  • Introducing a new and improved FDA food label
  • Releasing Healthy People 2000, a guide for improved health promotion and disease prevention activities
  • Educating the public about the health dangers from tobacco use
  • Leading successful efforts to prevent the introduction of “Uptown,” a non-filtered mentholated cigarette
  • Inaugurating a $100 million minority male health and injury prevention initiative
  • Implementing greater gender and ethnic diversity in senior positions of Health and Human Services, including the appointment of the first female director of the National Institutes of Health, the first female and first Hispanic Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, the first African American Commissioner of the Social Security Administration and the first African American Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration

 

 


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