About Preventive Medicine
Our Mission
The mission of the Department of Preventive Medicine is to improve human health and prevent disease through innovative collaborative research, education / training, community engagement, and dissemination and translation of knowledge and public service. We will achieve our mission as we:
- Pursue high-quality team-based research to answer important health questions and generate new knowledge in disease prevention / health promotion and improve health equity by conducting ground breaking research studies.
- Collaborate with colleagues, communities, organizations, academic institutions, professionals, and citizens to promote health and prevent disease
- Build research capacity of health professionals through collaboration, consultation, skills development, and education
Goals
The mission of the Department of Preventive Medicine will be realized by accomplishing the following goals:
- To promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of research, teaching, and service.
- To develop and foster high quality research activities that are consistent with our mission of the department to prevent disease and promote human health and quality of life
- To implement a curriculum to train a diverse student body that emphasizes core competencies in preventive medicine, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical research, and biomedical data science https://www.uthsc.edu/preventive-medicine/education.php
- To provide methodological service, collaboration, mentorship, and education in study design, data analyses, and application to research in basic, clinical, and translational science
- To recruit and retain a diverse faculty to meet institutional and departmental missions and goals https://www.uthsc.edu/preventive-medicine/faculty.php
Values
The Department of Preventive Medicine values:
- Collaboration / Team Science
- Academic Freedom
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Research Integrity
- High-quality Teaching and Scholarship
- Community Engagement
- Respect
- Professionalism
- Innovation
- Service
- Productivity
- Mentorship
History
Previous chairs of the Department of Preventive Medicine include:
- 1972-1994: John W. Runyan, Jr., MD
- 1994-1999: William B. Applegate, MD, MPH
- 2000-2010: Grant W. Somes, PhD
- 2010-2014: Karen Johnson, MD, MPH
- 2014-2017: Teresa Waters, PhD
- 2017-2018: Catherine Womack, MD
- 2018-2019: Jay H. Fowke, PhD, MPH
- 2019-present: Karen Johnson, MD, MPH
The Department of Preventive Medicine was instrumental in Memphis/Shelby County in developing one of the nation's premier community-based, nurse-run, chronic-disease treatment programs. The Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology merged with the Department of Preventive Medicine in the 1990’s to strengthen the research initiative in the College of Medicine. In 2012, we added a Certificate in Clinical Investigation program to our on-going MS in Epidemiology program.