Celebrating Our Momentum and Excellence

August 4, 2022

Thanks to your dedication and innovation, there is tremendous momentum propelling RBHS forward. As we look toward the future, our institution is equipped with an updated strategic framework and a multitude of achievements, which bring great anticipation and excitement for continued excellence.

In April, we unveiled “One RBHS: The Way Forward”, our new strategic plan that will guide our endeavors over the next five years. The aim for this plan was to realize our collective vision of a multidisciplinary, multi-dimensional, and multi-faceted organization—in which the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts—and to set a new standard for excellence in health sciences education, research, and patient care. This plan was created with broad input from the RBHS community through two sets of town halls, thousands of survey responses, and meetings with dozens of stakeholders and partners. We are ready to implement the plan. Committees are being formed to guide the implementation of each of the nine goals. This work will include developing timetables, identifying needed actions, prioritizing activities, defining criteria for tracking progress and outcomes, and keeping the community informed of efforts and accomplishments. My thanks go out to those who have volunteered.

As our implementation begins to take shape, so do our new physical spaces. Thanks to generous support from the State of New Jersey, work on the Rutgers Health Complex is beginning across from the New Brunswick train station. That facility will house, among others, the pre-clinical teaching of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and new facilities for translational research. State support will also mean an extensive renovation of the Medical Sciences Building in Newark, which is a key hub for our faculty, staff, and students. In partnership with RWJBarnabas Health (RWJBH), we continue to see progress in New Brunswick on the Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, which will be the state’s first freestanding cancer hospital and which will house inpatient and outpatient services as well as research laboratories and oncology support services. Construction is also progressing at the new outpatient services building on Plum Street, which will create new and modern space for our health care providers to deliver state-of-the-art ambulatory care to their patients.

Of course, what matters is the important work that takes place in these buildings, and much of this is done by our faculty, which continues to grow. One of my primary goals as Chancellor has been to increase the size of the RBHS faculty, particularly members of the faculty who conduct research and create knowledge, in addition to educating our students and seeing patients. We have hired more than 500 faculty in RBHS in the last five years, including 130 in the last fiscal year. More than 400 of these faculty have been hired into the medical schools alone. Since beginning the affiliation with RWJBH, the number of full-time faculty at RWJMS has particularly grown in size. These hires span many disciplines and include faculty working on the leading edge in their fields of study.

In addition to new faculty, we also welcomed new leaders to RBHS. In May, I appointed Amy Murtha, an accomplished researcher and a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine, to be dean of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Most recently, Dr. Murtha was a professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Murtha will join us on August 15. In January, Danielle Dick was appointed Director of the new Rutgers University Addiction Research Center (RuARC) and the Gregory Q. Brown Chair in Cell Biology and Neuroscience. Her work engages faculty across all Rutgers schools and campuses with expertise in addiction prevention, research, treatment, education, and public policy. Finally, RBHS named Ethan Halm its first vice chancellor of population health to oversee initiatives that will offer better solutions to prevent disease and manage populations with chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, which costs the United States billions each year in addition to their toll on human health.

Our schools continue to be destinations of choice for prospective students. Over the past decade, our schools of dental medicine, medicine, nursing, and public health have experienced at least a 35 percent increase in the numbers of applicants for major programs. In this same period, the School of Health Professions has reshaped itself to focus more on graduate education and this year added five new graduate programs, while the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy last fall welcomed its largest first-year class of 260.

Our distinguished faculty continued to lead their fields and make an impact on the health and wellbeing of the global community. In June, a world-class team of researchers assembled and led by Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and its Deputy Director and Chief Scientific Officer Eileen White was awarded a $25 million Cancer Grand Challenges grant to tackle the condition of cancer cachexia. Cancer Grand Challenges is a global funding platform, co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the US, which supports a community of diverse, global teams to come together, think differently and take on some of cancer’s toughest challenges. Additionally, Petros Levounis, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and associate dean for professional development at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, has been named president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Dr. Levounis is also the chief of service at University Hospital. Lastly, three School of Nursing Faculty – Caroline Dorsen, Carolyn Hayes, and Olga Jarrín Montaner – were inducted into the American Academy of Nursing, one of the highest honors in their field. 

Across RBHS, we continue to innovate in health care for patients of all backgrounds and needs. Rutgers School of Dental Medicine opened the Georges E. Sara Digital Dentistry Center, honoring the memory of an entrepreneur whose generosity accelerated its creation. With 48 stations, three 3-D printers and three laboratory scanners, the center is helping to advance dentistry, making the process of dental restoration easier and quicker for patients. Thanks to the efforts of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Maternal Health Awareness Day (January 23) gained national recognition by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. This important designation comes six years after it was founded in New Jersey at Rutgers and supported by numerous high-profile efforts recognizing the importance of maternal health and safety, including statements from Vice President Kamala Harris and health care organizations across the country. The School of Health Professions and the Veterans Health Administration have established a partnership to provide the scientific basis for presumptive injury for soldiers exposed to airborne hazards and burn pits while serving in the Middle East. These efforts are supported by President Joe Biden and will help our veterans to obtain the care they need.

Reflecting our increasing excellence, and the successful work of the Rutgers Foundation, RBHS fundraising efforts achieved a total of more than $87 million in gifts for FY22, with the number of major gifts increasing by 8.3 percent. The grateful patient major gift program secured $4.26M in gifts. Annual giving dollars raised grew by 15 percent, which included a successful Rutgers Giving Day where dollars to RBHS doubled over FY21. Currently under way for 2022 is the RBHS Scholarship Match Campaign, which has brought in over $600,000 in new gifts and matching funds for scholarships at New Jersey Medical School in its first six months. The School of Public Health raised record funding for scholarships in FY22 including a $400,000 gift from an anonymous donor to support Masters of Public Health students in the newly-established Population Aging Concentration, which is one of the first of its kind in the nation. Older adults are the fastest growing segment of the United States population, and this gift will address the urgent need to train the next generation of scholars, advocates, and community leaders with expertise in aging. Additionally, a $2 million grant from The Mario Family Foundation to the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy established a scholarship fund to support students accepted into the school’s innovative dual PharmD/MD program, which is designed to create an elite group of interdisciplinary practitioners who are highly skilled in both pharmacy and medicine.

We have also sought to showcase RBHS as an inclusive institution. Important work from the university’s first diversity strategic plan was integrated into our strategic plan, laying the foundation for a version of RBHS we aspire to become. During the year, we continued to expand our dialogue about many important issues with programming such as Equity Talks, which discussed ways for cultivating equity and inclusive excellence for all. Another initiative, the “Beyond the Book” discussion forum, was launched in summer 2022 to engage in deeper dialogue about differences within the RBHS community.

As a community we bravely dealt with the continued effects of the COVID-19. What began as a hybrid academic year in the fall slowly transformed into a more familiar spring semester that culminated with an in-person commencement – an experience that has been sorely missed by all. I was especially proud of our efforts to help vaccinate the faculty, staff, and students of the university, as well as members of its surrounding communities; all told, our vaccination clinics in Camden, Newark, and Piscataway administered more than 20,000 vaccine doses. While new, more contagious variants may present unknown challenges in the future, I am confident in our resiliency and ability to live alongside the virus and thrive.

Sincerely,

Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH
Chancellor, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences