Woodruff Health Sciences Center

In my position as CEO of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC), I have a special perspective on the advances in public health that our students and faculty make every day. Rollins is a key component of WHSC, along with schools of medicine and nursing, a primate research center, Winship Cancer Institute, and Emory Healthcare. Together these entities integrate our missions of teaching, research, and practice—all with the end goal of bettering the health of the community.

As you know, Rollins plays an integral role in WHSC by looking at population health and is one of a few schools of public health in the United States with a team of researchers dedicated to mental health. Rollins’ new initiative, the Center for Behavioral Health Policy Studies, will help create a much needed fundamental infrastructure in a health care system that is just starting to integrate mental and physical health care. In turn, scientists and clinicians throughout the WHSC are using the findings of their Rollins colleagues in teaching and patient care. This integration is more important now than ever before as we enter a new era in health care.

I think the old saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” exemplifies what WHSC does. Indeed having the benefit of all our disciplines working as one is really our only and best hope to realize the potential of this new era and to keep our commitment to society to make and keep people healthy.

S. Wright Caughman, MD
Executive Vice President for
Health Affairs, Emory University
CEO, Woodruff Health Sciences Center
Chairman, Emory Healthcare