Letter from the Dean

Dean Philip A. Pizzo, MD
 

Dean Philp A. Pizzo, M.D. ; Photograph Leslie Williamson

Dear Readers,

My first year at Stanford has been an exciting one. It has been a time of evaluation, reflection, planning, communication, engagement, debate, consensus building and decision making, all directed at further enhancing Stanford’s role as a global model for research-intensive medical schools.

The year ahead promises to be even more exciting as we embark on an effort to shape the medical school’s future.

There is little doubt that academic medicine in America is challenged by a paradox. On the one hand, the discoveries and innovations emanating from science and technology promise to dramatically improve the health of adults and children during the 21st century. At the same time, financial challenges resulting from more than a decade of managed care and Medicare cutbacks are hurting academic medical centers throughout the United States.

These divergent forces are certainly at work at Stanford. And rather than respond with reactive decisions that could erode the integrity of our medical school, we are taking a proactive stance.

Accordingly, we began a strategic planning process during the past year. Nine work groups consisting of faculty, students and staff convened in the summer of 2001 to develop initiatives addressing the opportunities and challenges for each of our critical missions.

By February of 2002 these groups had generated more than 100 strategic initiatives. We distilled these to fewer than 20 and brought them to our planning retreat held Feb. 8-10 in Carmel Valley. Retreat attendees included department chairs, faculty leaders, medical and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, staff, trustees and the university provost. It was an extraordinary event in its own right because it helped each attendee understand the important and intricate interrelationships that exist among our missions, what each entity adds to the overall organization, and what we will need to do to assure our future excellence.

Among the most important tasks we faced leading up to the retreat was clarifying our mission. In a number of ways, our current mission statement is an affirmation of both our past and our future:

To be a premier research-intensive medical school that improves health through leadership and collaborative discoveries and innovation in patient care, education and research.

How can we live up to this mission? We have determined that the following qualities of our programs and institutional culture will prove to be most important:

  • Flexible, informal and non-traditional models for education, research, clinical programs, faculty activities, administration and organization
  • Adaptability
  • Translational research and medicine
  • Focus on quality and excellence (not size)
  • Commitment to change
  • Recognition of resource constraints

We have further prioritized our menu of initiatives. A summary of our most immediate goals appears in this issue of Stanford Medicine. [See below, Ed.]

Carrying out these initiatives will require constant surveillance, difficult choices and great resources — not to mention lots of communication and a commitment to continue moving forward. As stewards of a great medical school, it is imperative that we strive to succeed. You can keep up with our progress by accessing the Dean’s Newsletter (http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/), published biweekly. I look forward to sharing our progress with you in the months and years ahead.

With best regards,
Philip Pizzo, MD
Dean, Stanford University School of Medicine

Our most immediate strategic initiatives include:

Medical student education

• We will delineate the core knowledge every medical student requires and change our curriculum accordingly.
• Beginning in 2003, each medical student will be expected to pursue a scholarly concentration in one of a variety of areas of scholarship (e.g., molecular medicine, clinical research, bioengineering, health economics, public service).
• We will offer students parallel and interrelated education in both science and clinical medicine.
• We will define financial incentives for excellence in teaching. This endeavor will be coupled with a major initiative to create an education endowment.
• We will address our pressing need for new library and education facilities.

Graduate Student Education

We will:
• Evaluate the role of interdisciplinary programs and increase bioscience students’ exposure to clinical medicine.
• Create a career development center.
• Increase diversity in admissions.

Postdoctoral Scholars

• We will assess the needs of postdoctoral fellows and scholars in clinical training programs and research.
• We will delineate guidelines for compensation.
• We will set limits on duration of training.
• Other areas to be addressed include expanding diversity, developing a career center, addressing housing needs and critically reviewing the overall size of the postdoctoral scholar program.

Research

• This year we recognized that emphasizing translational research and medicine is one of our overarching goals. As a result, we are determining the resources needed to make translational research and medicine more robust.
• We are planning a research retreat in early fall to determine key areas for investment.
• We have launched a Web site for internal research communication.

 

Clinical Care

• An assessment of resources needed to stimulate and support translational and clinical research is under way.
• Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital will finalize clinical strategic plans during the next months. We will link these plans to the school’s plan.

Professoriate

• We have launched an effort to assess and change the criteria for appointment and promotion for faculty in both the university tenure line and non-tenure lines.
• Also under way is an initiative to improve diversity and support career development for women and minorities.

Information Technology

• We will expand efforts to advance the role of IT in education and research, especially clinical and translational research.
• We will work with the hospitals to maximize the utility of the medical center’s information resources.
• With the recent appointment of a senior associate dean for information resources and technology, we can expect initiatives regarding Lane Library, the planned Stanford Medicine Information and Learning Environment and more.

Finance and Administration

• We will develop a new operating budget to facilitate the achievement of our missions in education and interdisciplinary collaboration.
• We will launch a departmentally based strategic planning process.
• To keep our planning mission on track, we have created a new office: the Office of Institutional Planning.

Advocacy, Communication, Public Policy and Philanthropy

We will:
• Create an office of government relations.
• Enhance our communications both within and outside of the university.
• Establish the Stanford Medicine Leadership Council, which will play a major role in the philanthropic campaign that will be launched to help assure the future success of the Stanford School of Medicine.

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