Health Systems Topic of McGehee Lectureship
| April 29, 2015 | The UAMS Graduate School welcomed Maureen Smith, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, April 15 as the fourth annual presenter of the Robert E. McGehee, Jr. Distinguished Lectureship in Biomedical Sciences.
Maureen Smith, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., is presented a mounted local crystal by Robert McGehee, Ph.D., dean of the UAMS Graduate School, following her talk at the fourth annual Robert E. McGehee Jr. Distinguished Lectureship in Biomedical Sciences.
Smith, a professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences, Family Medicine, and Surgery, directs a research program that evaluates the impact of health system changes on access to and quality of medical care for aging and chronically ill persons.
Her talk focused on the need for academic health centers to be at the forefront of health care as adaptive health systems that learn from their own processes.
“For a number of years I have believed that somehow research and evidence must be integrated into how we deliver health care,” Smith said, noting the United States has had a long history of being a poorly performing outlier when looking at global health outcomes related to per capita spending on health care.
She cited the success of the programs developed in Wisconsin, which have developed statewide partnerships opened up numerous avenues of federally funded research that have led to better health outcomes.
Smith is a graduate of the University of Iowa who earned her medical and public health degrees from Yale University School of Medicine. She also holds a doctorate in health services research, policy and administration from the University of Minnesota.
The lectureship is named for Robert McGehee, Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Division of Neonatology, the dean of the UAMS Graduate School, and executive director of the Arkansas Biosciences Institute. It was established and is supported by a gift from grandparents of a student mentored by McGehee and is the first endowed distinguished lectureship of the Graduate School.