"Transforming Health and Healing." You may have seen this phrase on banners around the Emory campus, but it's more than just a tagline. Transforming Health and Healing is both the vision and the promise of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and it's the reason I was so excited to join the Emory team a few months ago.

Transforming Health and Healing means pioneering discoveries that advance our understanding of disease prevention and treatment. It means preparing the next generation of health professionals to save and improve lives in communities worldwide. And it means continuously improving the quality of care for our patients.

If you think that sounds like a tall order, you're right. But it's one the Woodruff Health Sciences Center is uniquely prepared—and determined—to fill. Our past record of achievement is proof positive that we can accomplish the extraordinary, and we have a focused and attainable plan to develop a new model of health and healing for the 21st century. By working with our collaborating partners here in Atlanta, nationwide, and around the world to take full advantage of the academic and clinical programs throughout the University and beyond, we will become the model academic health center in the country—the one others will try to follow.

Components of the plan that will get us there include enhanced focus on providing evidence-based, patient-centered care; re-evaluating and re-engineering our definition of health to create a model that is not reactive, but predictive; devoting resources and talent to addressing the most pressing health challenges around the world; and continuing to attract and prepare the most promising students through innovative, interdisciplinary curricula.

Through these and other efforts, Emory's faculty, staff, students and other thought leaders will pioneer new solutions that will make a tangible and lasting difference on the health of real people in communities around the world—and that will transform health and healing.

Dr. Fred Sanfilippo
Executive Vice President for Health Affairs
CEO of Woodruff Health Sciences
Chairman of Emory Healthcare