Oberlander recommended as chair of UNC social medicine department

June 4, 2015

Dr. Jon Oberlander

Jonathan Oberlander, PhD, professor of health policy and management at The University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and of social medicine in the UNC School of Medicine, has been selected to serve as chair of the Department of Social Medicine. UNC medical school dean William L. Roper, MD, MPH, made the recommendation, effective July 1, pending approval by the UNC Board of Trustees.

Oberlander has served as vice chair of the department since 2012 and has been a member of the School of Medicine faculty since 1997. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UNC in 1989 and holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University.

In his new role, he will have operational, financial and administrative oversight of the Department of Social Medicine, supporting its mission to promote multidisciplinary education, leadership, service, research and scholarship at the intersection of medicine and society. He also will oversee the department’s three affiliated research centers and the new master’s program in literature, medicine and culture, to be launched in partnership with the UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature.

A national authority on health care reform, health care politics and Medicare, Oberlander is author of The Political Life of Medicare (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and co-editor of the three-volume series, The Social Medicine Reader, 2nd ed., (Duke University Press, 2005). His articles on health-care politics and health-care reform have appeared in publications including The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Health Affairs, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and Social Science & Medicine.

“Dr. Oberlander is one of the most knowledgeable and articulate people in the country about the profound transformation that is occurring in U.S. health care,” said Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor at the Gillings School. “That background, coupled with his leadership skills, dynamism, analytic capability and charisma make him a spectacular choice for the chair of social medicine.”

Oberlander will maintain his appointment as professor of health policy and management at the Gillings School and continue as adjunct professor with the Department of Political Science in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. He succeeds Gail Henderson, PhD, who served five years as social medicine chair and recently announced she would step down to focus more upon her research in global health inequality and research ethics.