Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Meaning of Mission

I just returned from ROME, Italy, following a spiritual retreat for the Board of Trustees of Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) a large not for profit system headquartered in Cincinnati OH. I have been on the CHP Board for ten years and this retreat was the culmination of our visits to the "mother houses" of the orders of sisters who have come together to help form the system. For me, this was a journey to learn more about the mission of CHP and to see it in action in real time!! We visited various key Vatican dicasteries, or Papal Offices, concerned with health care world wide. We had a chance to meet with key leaders within the dicasteries and to further our understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in global health issues. Among the highlights of the trip was our participation in the weekly Papal audience with our special seats just a few feet away from the Holy Father.CHP is a mission driven organization with a core goal of taking care of the poor and underserved. In these challenging times, seeing the mission in real life and almost being able to actually "touch" it made me better appreciate its meaning. As always, I am interested in your views here too. Thanks for your support, DAVID NASH

Monday, September 8, 2008

Launching a New School

As our regular readers know, Thomas Jefferson University has enthusiastically embraced the creation of a new school on our campus called the Jefferson School of Health Policy and Population Health----unanimously approved by the Board back on July 28 of this past summer. Our team has been hard at work building the new school and I want to share aspects of this challenge with our readers. We are in the process of searching for some key new leaders to help us build the Masters Degree in Health Care Quality and Safety. This is a tall order as we are looking for persons who can teach, do research, and instill enthusiasm for this nascent field. We are also creating a new curriculum from scratch along with bylaws, a faculty committee structure and the like. Of course, we are also preparing the marketing plan and any day now, we will launch our first national press release. Our work is guided by a New School Task Force that meets every other week and reviews all of the key decisions. We also recently held our second New School Advisory Committee and received all kinds of input from across our own campus. Finally, we have had fruitful meetings with our colleagues at the University of Delaware and at Dickinson College. I will be providing our readers with regular updates now that the summer is over and we are in full swing with the operational blocking and tackling. Buckle your seat belts and hold on tight for this exciting ride!! I look forward to hearing from all of our readers. DAVID NASH