Desmond Runyan

National Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program
Professor, Social Medicine & Pediatrics

DrPH 1983, Department of Maternal and Child Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health
MD 1976, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota
MPH 1975, Division of Maternal and Child Health, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, Minnesota
BA 1972, Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota

My work involves the application of clinical epidemiology to the problem of violence against children. My research has focused on the impact of societal intervention on the mental health functioning of the child victims. I have examined the impact of the foster care system, court testimony, and the medical examination on the children. My work has touched on all aspects of abuse including sexual abuse, physical abuse, Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy, and Failure-to-Thrive. My longstanding project is a 20-year study of the impact of abuse, now in its 19th year. The other major project I direct is a 5 year effort to assess the effectiveness of a specific parenting education program, The Period of PURPLE Crying, to reduce or eliminate the problem of shaken baby syndrome for an entire state. I also am a pediatrician at the University of North Carolina Hospitals attending both on the child abuse consult service and on the general pediatrics inpatient service.

My other role is as the National Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program. The Clinical Scholars program was begun in 1969 and sponsorship was assumed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 1972. The program seeks to prepare leaders in health care who can function in academia, in government service, and in private settings to help improve healthcare for all Americans. With over 1100 alumni, the program already has been a strong force in US health care. Scholars come to the program after completion of residency and spend two to three years learning health services research, community-based participatory research, and evidence-based medicine. Scholars have been leaders in building geriatrics, child abuse pediatrics, general internal medicine, and general pediatrics among other activities. Program alumni are deans at 8 medical schools, chair 45 medical school departments, and twenty-eight of them have been elected to the Institute of Medicine. While the program has resided at different times at 11 different medical schools, the currently active programs are located at Yale, Penn, Michigan, and UCLA.

Biosketch

Curriculum Vitae

Email: drunyan@med.unc.edu

Phone: 919.843.8261

Fax: 919.843.2666

Post: Desmond Runyan / CB #7240, Department of Social Medicine / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7240