The Strategic Plan for Emory

Updates and Highlights

The Emory Global Health Institute
June 2, 2008
How can an American university like Emory help improve health around the world? This was a question university leaders asked themselves while determining whether to dedicate one of its strategic initiatives to global health. The answer was that an institution like Emory could have a positive impact on world health if it focused on developing and fostering sustainable global partnerships with like-minded in-country organizations. And that is how the Emory Global Health Institute (Institute) was born.

Officially established in September 2006, the mission of the institute is to advance Emory University’s efforts to improve health around the world. The institute achieves this mission by supporting Emory faculty, students, and alumni in their work to find solutions to critical global health problems, with an emphasis on those that disproportionately affect people living in low- and middle-income countries.

Jeffrey P. Koplan, former head of the CDC, is director of the institute and vice president for global health at the university. Since its founding, the institute has assisted in hiring five global health distinguished faculty members and funded twenty-six faculty global health programs. Through these funded faculty programs, the institute has assisted Emory researchers in establishing and/or cultivating global health partnerships with a variety of foreign universities, governments, and non-governmental organizations as part of their work to address specific global health challenges.

The institute has also established a Global Health Institute Field Scholars Awards program for students across the university and has funded forty-eigh students participating in global health projects. The institute has helped develop a global health minor at Emory College and is currently working to expand the School of Nursing’s global health curriculum for undergraduates and develop global public health law and policy courses at the School of Law. The Institute has also established a Student Advisory Committee whose members come from every school at the university and whose mission is to aid in fostering cross-school networking and cross-disciplinary global health student projects.

The institute has brought two visiting fellows to the Emory community. In March 2008, Flemming Konradsen, PhD, visited Emory as the Institute’s first Visiting Fellow. Konradsen is a professor at the University of Copenhagen and an expert in environmental health hazards. In April 2008, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, MS, spent a week at Emory as the Institute’s first Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Madlala-Routledge is a Member of Parliament of the Republic of South Africa and a former Deputy Minister of Health who was dismissed from her position because of her evidence-based approach to addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in her country.

For more information about the Emory Global Health Institute, please visit http://www/globalhealth.emory.edu.

Investing in Emory’s Vision: Implementation Update
May 5, 2008
(Excerpts from EMORY REPORT, APRIL 28, 2008, STRATEGIC PLAN IMPLEMENTATION)

More than two years and $57 million into implementation, the strategic plan initiatives are going full tilt.  To name just a few accomplishments to date:

• A Center for Faculty Development and Excellence has been created
  
  
• The financial aid program Emory Advantage has reduced student debt
  
  
• A Work-Life Resource Center is in place
  
  
• Vaccine research is tackling the most deadly infectious diseases of the developing world
  
  
• New partnerships with community physicians are making cancer trials available throughout Georgia
  
  
• The Carlos Museum brought us “Cradle of Christianity,” and now a major King Tut exhibition to delight and enlighten Emory and the greater Atlanta community.

The Strategic Implementation Advisory Committee (SIAC), comprised of president's cabinet members, deans from across the University, and strategic theme leaders has been in place to shepherd the implementation activities of the plan as it evolves.

As an example of the SIAC's role, a diagnostic assessment of the cross-disciplinary strategic initiatives and their implementation process conducted over the past year resulted in a set of recommendations to create linkages among the schools and the initiatives.

These efforts to bring the initiatives and schools in closer alignment become even more critical as Campaign Emory launches on Sept. 25 (campaign.emory.edu/insider).

For more information on Emory’s strategic plan implementation go to http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/ to read a special strategic plan update in the Emory Report.  This special insert provides a snapshot in time of the plan's implementation, a crucial time as strategic plan leaders enter the next phase of measurement, prioritization, and alignment with Campaign Emory.

Religions and the Human Spirit Initiative explores interplay among religion, health, conflict, society, and the arts
April 1, 2008
What are the connections between religion and health?  What is the role of religion in motivating social conflicts and peace?  How does the complex interplay among religion, society, and the arts express itself in teaching, research, student life, and performance at Emory?  From religious extremism to meditation practices, Emory scholars across the humanities, basic and clinical sciences, and social sciences are studying how religious beliefs and practices drive social change, shape attitudes and institutions, influence health and well being, and address matters of ultimate concern.

As one of Emory’s cross-cutting strategic plan initiatives, Religions and the Human Spirit partners with other parts of the university to address these and other challenging and sometimes contentious points where religion and our common life intersect.  Initially under the leadership of Professors Laurie Patton and Carol Newsom in Religion and Theology respectively, the initiative is currently led by Gordon Newby, Mary Elizabeth Moore, and Bobbi Patterson in Middle Eastern and South Asian studies, theology, and religion, respectively.  Over twenty additional faculty from across the university also play key roles in guiding the initiative.

The Collaborative for Contemplative Studies and the Religion and Health Collaborative are two of the program’s six sub-initiatives that focus on the relationship between religious practices and health and well being.  Contemplative Studies helped sponsor the fall 2007 Mind and Life Institute with His Holiness the Dalai Lama that explored the potential of meditation as a preventative and treatment strategy for depression.  Over three thousand people attending the event heard results from an ongoing study sponsored by the Collaborative for Contemplative Studies that has found that students who practiced compassion meditation experienced significant reductions in deleterious physical and emotional responses to stress.   

The Religion and Health Collaborative’s fall 2007 Maps and Mazes conference explored critical inquiry at the intersection of religion and health, with partners from South Africa and faculty from across the U.S.  In January 2008 the Collaborative awarded three seed grants to multidisciplinary teams of researchers across the health sciences, theology, and Emory College.  Research topics include religion and hospice use among African Americans, religious health assets in water projects in Haiti, and spirituality and maternal-infant outcomes among Latinas.  Due dates for letters of intent for next year’s seed grant program will be announced in the late spring of 2008.
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A third sub-initiative, Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, partnered with the Institute for Comparative and International Studies, the Candler School of Theology and a wide spectrum of programs across Emory in hosting a public event titled The Wrathful God: Religious Extremism in Comparative Perspective.  Held in March 2008, the event included presentations probing religious extremism from a wide variety of perspectives.  It followed on the heels of the Summit on Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding held in fall 2007.  Also featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama as well as prominent scholars, leaders, and activists, the summit drew large crowds as the panelists examined the positive and negative impact of religious practices across Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism.

Three additional sub-initiatives round out Religions and the Human Spirit.  Religion and Science seeks to deepen religious and ethical engagement with scientific research into such areas as the brain and behavior and the origins of life.  Religion and Sexuality studies how religious stories, rules and rituals shape human sexuality and is acquiring a large collection of rare library materials to attract leading scholars and facilitate research.  Religion, Society, and the Arts fosters a deeper understanding of the ways the arts express and explore the multiple dimensions of life in different religious contexts and offers programming that reaches across Emory and the Atlanta area, such as participating in the Cradle of Christianity exhibit at the Carlos Museum, 

For more information on opportunities to pursue crosscutting scholarship sponsored by Religions and the Human Spirit, please visit the website http://www.emory.edu/religions&humanspirit/.

From Mary Elizabeth Moore: “The most significant contribution of Religions and the Human Spirit is the ferment it has created. It has stirred the human spirit at Emory and has thus contributed exponentially to interdisciplinary research in religion, creative teaching experiments, and meaningful service with and to the larger community. Its lasting contribution will be further ferment, carried forth by faculty, students, and staff who are committed to research and teaching trajectories that are incubating now under the auspices of the Initiative.”