I’m honored to have been appointed as Graduate Faculty at the John D. Bower School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The School is one of the few schools of Population Health in the nation and “their mission is to educate leaders who will transform health care delivery and the health of Mississippians. ”
This really resonated with me as I had previously done work in Mississippi when Specialty Disease Management Services Inc. (SDM) was involved in the Medicaid disease management initiative as a subcontractor to McKesson Health Solutions.  SDM provided on the ground RNs and community care coordinators located throughout the state seeking to improve the health and care for Medicaid beneficiaries with asthma, diabetes heart failure and COPD. I also have in-laws in Leland, Mississippi in the heart of the Delta.
The school is led by Dr. Bettina Beech, their Dean, who is a dynamo building the school and truly working to embed the schools expertise into the state by getting involved in programs to leverage population health in an effort to improve the health of all Mississippians.  Her areas of scientific inquiry focus on the role of nutritional factors in the primary and secondary prevention of obesity and type 2 diabetes, with a particular focus on child health disparities.
The School has three departments, Data Science, Population Health Science and Preventive Medicine.  Offering an MS/PhD in Biostatistics and Data Science, an MS/PhD in Population Health Science and and their newly launched Executive MS in Population Health Management.
This semester I taught a course on ACO’s in their Executive Masters Program.
Discussing the School of Population Health would be incomplete without mentioning John D. Bower, MD.  Dr. Bower was instrumental in establishing care for kidney dialysis and the federal legislation(H.R. 1) that made persons with end-stage renal disease eligible for Medicare. This was population health at its finest, embodying clinical practice,  healthcare system reform, program delivery and policy.  You can learn more about Dr. Bower and the work his foundation does here.