'We Must Be Future-Focused' Says New USU President Dr. Jonathan Woodson
By Ian Neligh
Building strong relationships with stakeholders, and preparing students to embrace the digital medical platforms of the future are just some of the many goals of the new president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU).
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| Dr. Jonathan Woodson will be officially installed as president in an investiture ceremony on November 30, 2022, at USU. (Photo credit: Tom Balfour, USU) |
The university’s seventh president, Woodson oversees a student body of more than 2,500 students from the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine and its associated graduate programs in the biomedical sciences and public health, the Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing, the university’s Postgraduate Dental College and its College of Allied Health Sciences. In this position, Woodson also supervises more than 15 research centers and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute.
“My philosophy is that I’m a servant leader — which means whenever I have run any organization it has been about (creating an) environment that enables all members of the organization to contribute to reach their potential and to support the organization to meet its total mission,” Woodson said, during a Q&A with the university community during its candidate search earlier this year.
“It’s important to create an environment that is inspiring to the students, faculty, staff and based upon everybody appreciating the need to innovate,” Woodson said.
Woodson was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs from 2010 to 2016. He was also the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense for all health and force health protection-related issues. Woodson said while working in the position he received an excellent understanding of how government works at its higher levels.
“It’s interesting how complicated and important it is for any president of USU… to understand the dynamics and build relationships at that level,” Woodson said. “One of the dynamics that you have to be aware of is that all of the individuals at the higher echelon of the Department of Defense are committed patriots, highly intelligent and superb leaders — but many don’t understand health and many don’t understand the medical community. So having someone who can actually present solutions and talk about issues that are relevant to them is extremely important.”
He added during that time, he worked for four different secretaries of defense.
.jpeg "“It’s important to create an environment that is inspiring to the students, faculty, staff and based upon everybody appreciating the need to innovate,” Woodson said.")
“If you’re trying to get a community to understand what it is you do, what value you bring to the total mission of the Department of Defense you’ve got to have a very clear message that you can repeat over and over again — because new people come in and new leaders need to be indoctrinated into the value of the system… that’s an important function of the (university) president.”
Before his appointment to the DoD by President Obama in 2010, Woodson was a professor of Surgery and associate dean for Students, Diversity, and Multicultural Affairs, and a senior attending vascular surgeon at Boston Medical Center.
“My career in academic medicine has led me into some great situations to collaborate on research … but more importantly to mentor a huge number of students, faculty, fellows, that has been the great pleasure and treasure of my life, mentoring individuals,” Woodson said. “I know what it means to build a supportive environment for students.”
Woodson said in the past he’s had the opportunity as a visiting professor around the country to examine a lot of academic programs along the way.
“I’ll tell you I’m deeply worried about some of them in terms of their curriculum and their focus and the fact that their students may be irrelevant upon graduation,” Woodson said. “So something that I think universities need to be thinking about always is the future and ensuring their students are well prepared going forward. Certainly, USU has led the way and has all the right stuff to be a leader in this field and make sure that others follow the USU example.”
As an example, Woodson said it is essential to help students be ready to embrace digital medical platforms after graduation.
“How do we prepare our students to interact with a broader array of industries and technologies that will reshape what they do?” Woodson said. “Digital has become a (serious issue) in healthcare that we’ve got to recognize, we’ve got to leverage. And as we talk about the connections between hospitals, clinics, and home and professionals — it’s going to drive a new way of doing business in the world.”
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| Dr. Jonathan Woodson, President of the Uniformed Services University, meets with staff from the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center. (Courtesy photo) |
He added one of the recent issues graduates will see going into the future will include creating hospitals at home with the implementation of remote monitoring and modern technology.
“We’re going to see the development of the home as the first and last line of healthcare. What does this mean for who we train and how we train our professionals going forward? How do we train our leaders to work in this transformed world? How do we train our leaders to go out into the Military Health System and leverage some of these changes to ensure that we are ahead of the curve and not lagging, that we create the competitive edge?”
According to Woodson, digital advances in providing care can improve access, improve outcomes, and create more sustainable systems.
“But in today’s world as providers… we cannot hold in our head the amount of knowledge that we need to care for patients — particularly when you consider genomics and proteomics and its importance in precise care. We need to be developing the digital tools that are important,” Woodson said. “Today, in the 21st century, providers all need tools and instruments to fly by … (and) universities have a place in developing this and it is going to be important that we prepare our leaders to begin to leverage and transform healthcare and healthcare systems using these technologies.”
Woodson said providers should embrace the need for a national digital health strategy so that they’re able to synchronize all the technology, policies, and procedures and ensure that no populations are left behind.
