Dr. Will Ross has expanded his role at Washington University School of Medicine as associate dean for Diversity Programs to include also serving as principal officer for Community Partnerships. Dr. Ross also is professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology.
“The position of principal officer for Community Partnerships offers a unique opportunity to coordinate and strengthen community-based initiatives that improve health, particularly in our under-resourced communities,” Dr. Ross told The American.
“We will focus on some of the intractable health issues in our community, such as high infant mortality rates, along with racial disparities in cancer, diabetes, and behavioral health.”
In his expanded role, Dr. Ross will work in conjunction with programs already active in the area evolving from the Institute of Public Health, Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences, Siteman Cancer Center, the Gephardt Institute, BJC Healthcare, and other key stakeholders to enhance programs and strategies that address the health needs of our community. New initiatives will be developed in collaboration with community leaders and organizations from the city and county.
“In considering community partnership to be essential to our overall education and diversity and inclusion efforts, we will now be capitalizing on the long history of Will’s contributions, as well as his talents and inspiration, to foster an even more profound impact in the coming years,” the School of Medicine stated.
Community engagement was recognized as a major focus area for the medical center at the June 2015 Senior Leadership Retreat on Diversity and Inclusion. In addition, at the June 2018 Curriculum Renewal Retreat for the School of Medicine, community engagement and advocacy were identified as critical future directions for the education of its medical students and residents.
Dr. Ross earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his medical degree from Washington University. He completed an internal medicine residency at Vanderbilt University, a renal fellowship at Washington University, and a master’s degree in public health at Saint Louis University.
Over the past two decades he has recruited and developed a diverse workforce of medical students, residents and faculty while promoting health equity locally, nationally and globally. He is a co-founder of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Center for Diversity and Cultural Competence and served on the task force that created the Washington University Institute for Public Health, while serving as co-director of the new MD/MPH program. He was vice chair of the Washington University Commission on Diversity and Inclusion.
He has been instrumental in redesigning local access to health care for the underserved as the founder of the Saturday Neighborhood Health Clinic and co-founder of Casa de Salud Latino Health Center. Dr. Ross is also a founding member of the Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, a magnet health professions high school in St. Louis.
Dr. Ross previously served as the chief medical officer and director of ambulatory clinics for the St. Louis Regional Medical Center, the last public hospital in St. Louis. In 1997 he was appointed a charter and founding member of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission, which has leveraged over $400 million dollars to St. Louis to maintain an integrated network of safety net primary care clinics and public health services.
He served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Missouri Foundation for Health. He is currently chairman of the St. Louis City Board of Health and a past member of the Center for Disease Control’s Health Disparities Committee.
He has won numerous awards including the State of Missouri Martin Luther King Distinguished Service in Medicine Award, the Health Literacy Missouri Trailblazer Award, the Samuel Goldstein Leadership in Medical Education Award, the Humanism in Medicine Award, the Robert and Gerry Virgil Ethic of Service Award and the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2010 Stellar Performer in Health Care Award.
“My whole goal, both here at the medical school and going nationally, is to try and move medical schools to provide more service opportunities,” Dr. Ross told The American in 2010. “That way, students can go out in the community, provide care in the community and feel a part of that community.”
Now, he has a mandate to put this kind of community engagement into thorough practice throughout the medical school. As Dr. Ross told The American about the new opportunity, “We hope to create and sustain a region-wide approach, based on the collective impact model, that will promote health equity and reduce health disparities.”
Contact Dr. Ross at https://diversity.med.wustl.edu.
