Dr. Michael M. E. Johns: A Statesman of Our Time

Prior to his position at Emory, Dr. Johns was Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Vice President of the Medical Faculty at Johns Hopkins University. Under his leadership, the medical school rose to first place in sponsored research, restructured its curriculum to meet the challenges of a new era in health care, and developed a state-of-the-art technology transfer program.

Dr. Johns always challenges you to see and to lead, said Jonathan Saxton, MA, JD, Special Assistant for Health Policy and Communications in the Office of the CEO, Woodruff Health Science Center. He strongly believes in bringing together the best people possible and tapping their deepest reservoirs of initiative and creativity.

Vision 2012: Transforming Health and Healing

Emory is in the process of establishing an initial set of five Centers of Excellence (neuroscience, cardiovascular, transplant, lung, and cancer) that will become models of the types of integrated, patient-centered research and clinical care that Dr. John envisions, as well as the benchmark by which other national centers are measured. The key characteristics of these centers include:

• Integrated and inter-professional care teams;
• Services based on discovery and innovation;
• Inter-disciplinary education and training;
• Outcomes-based research and feedback;
• Technology that enables on-demand information sharing; and
• Measurable impact on the health of the populations served.

Dr. Johns is passionate about achieving the highest-quality standards of care, said Mr. Saxton. He believes that that every patient should receive the best care and has, therefore, instituted a total revamping of Emory’s quality control, ensuring that everyone is responsible and knowledgeable about the standards of care, not just a single quality control officer.

Additionally, Emory has partnered with Georgia Tech to create the Predictive Health Initiative, composed of the Center for Health Discovery and Well-Being, that will pioneer clinical approaches to predictive health, and Biomarker Science Discovery and Validation to develop and validate novel biomarkers for specific diseases and conditions.

In his Vision 2012, Dr. Johns said he believes that Emory is the perfect place to become not just the clinical and scientific leader, but also the thought-leader in transforming health and healing.

He knows that no one leader can deliver a long-range vision to fruition, so he has created leadership development programs like the WLA to ensure that Emory and the Woodruff Health Sciences Center have the leadership talent in place to continue the vision for decades to come, said Gary Teal, MBA, Senior Associate Vice President for Administration and Dr. Johns’ Chief of Staff.

Legacy

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him, in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on, wrote Walter Lippmann in his article, Roosevelt Has Gone, published in the New York Herald Tribune, April 14, 1945.