egardless of your view on whether the millennium begins with the year 2000 or 2001, the number 2000 gives us special cause to take stock and look forward to a new era. I am not so much excited by the idea of celebrating the exact second that marks the passage between millennia as I am intrigued by this numerical marker's power to inspire us to think about our past and future.

Here at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC), we can reflect with great pride on our many accomplishments. At the end of the first century of modern medicine, we can look back at an impressive legacy of achievements.

The opportunity to fulfill the potential of a consolidated Emory health sciences center was put in play with the extraordinary wisdom and generosity of Robert W. Woodruff, creating the WHSC. Building on this legacy in the past few years, we have worked together to further the vision of the WHSC as an unparalleled center of care, learning, and cutting-edge research and discovery. Among the highlights are the founding and eventual coming together of our core clinical facilities: The Emory Clinic, Emory University and Crawford Long hospitals, and Wesley Woods Center. After early comprehensive strategic planning, we created Emory Healthcare, while consolidating our hospitals' operations and introducing innovations in care and efficiencies in administration. We integrated within Emory Healthcare all our care components, including the recently created Emory Childrens' Center. We developed a unique partnership with Columbia/HCA. Emory extended its reach into the community through strategic relationships with critical institutions, including our almost century-old partnership with Grady Hospital and our long-term alliances with the Egleston and Veterans Affairs systems.

Our medical, public health, and nursing schools and the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center have grown into premier institutions that have never had stronger leadership, better programs, more talented and hard-working faculty, and more gifted students. Our professional schools and programs report new accomplishments daily, including significant increases in research support and recruitment and retention of top faculty. Emory has become a vibrant center of innovation, beginning with the first corneal and liver transplants in Georgia, Atlanta's first heart transplant and first "blue baby" operation, and the state's first coronary bypass.

From the Director  /  Letters

The Grady Crunch

The Healing Fields

Getting into the Act

Moving Forward  /  Noteworthy

Grady's Crisis is America's

Dig It!

We bring forward a great legacy into this new century. We are on target to achieve our goal of becoming one of the leading academic health centers in the world. We have new state-of-the-art facilities under construction that will bolster our biomedical research and nursing programs. We have added stellar new faculty and staff throughout the enterprise and recruited a new director for our Winship Cancer Institute.

The process for designing and implementing our plans and goals has had broad participation from WHSC faculty and staff. Now, on the occasion of the year 2000, I would like to invite even more participation. I invite all members of our WHSC community to submit your thoughts on what the WHSC should aspire to in this first century of the new millennium. It is my hope that many of you will be inspired to think broadly and expansively about our future.

I look forward to your input and to sharing it with the community. In the meantime, my best wishes to the entire extended Emory community for a happy and healthy new year, new century, and new millennium!

Michael M. E. Johns