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Keohane Remarks

April 27, 2004

I am pleased to welcome all of you – leaders of the Medical Center, and the Duke University Health System, and the University -- for this momentous announcement. Actually, it’s more of an introduction than an announcement, since thanks to email all of you and tens of thousands of people closely affiliated with our Medical Center and Health System already know the good news that Victor Dzau has accepted President-elect Brodhead’s and my offer to become Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University. You will have an opportunity to hear from both Dick Brodhead and Victor Dzau in a few moments, but I wanted to talk briefly about how we have come to this happy day.

As you know, in March 2003 Ralph Snyderman announced his decision to step down at the end of this academic year, after 15 remarkable years as the leader of our Medical Center and University and Health System. Because Ralph’s decision coincided with my own, the Trustees scheduled the searches for these two critical leadership positions in such a way that the new president would be chosen first and thus be able to participate in the selection of the chancellor. The added benefit, of course, was that the candidate for chancellor would know whom he or she would report to, and together the two leaders could determine whether the fit was right. I will let Dick and Victor speak to that question of fit, but from my perspective, we have been able to attract two exceptional leaders to take Duke and our Medical Center and Health System into the future with enormous confidence.

The charge to the search committee was clear. We asked them to find “a physician with clinical experience, proven scholarly accomplishments, and national recognition in a medical sciences discipline. The next chancellor needs the demonstrable capacity to lead a complex organization with maturity, honesty, consistency, and integrity through consensus-building and a well communicated strategic vision.”

We asked the search committee to consult broadly within the Medical Center and Health System and with University leaders, as well as leaders in academic medicine throughout the country, to help us define the Medical Center and Health System’s needs and the characteristics of leadership best suited to help us achieve our ambitious goals. Our Medical Center and Health System are strong – indeed, very strong. But we also face challenges – some of them daunting – and opportunities – some of them truly extraordinary – that will require a leader knowledgeable about and committed to strengthening all aspects of our operations, -- the teaching and training of doctors and nurses, our superb research enterprise, and ensuring that the clinical care we offer our patients is second to none. We need a chancellor who can not only lead, but who also will understand the importance of collaboration, both within the Medical Center and Health System and across the university, so that we can capitalize on the many synergies created by the excellence of all our programs. We need a leader who can build trust in the central administration of our Medical Center and Health System – among the faculty and leadership of our Schools of Medicine and Nursing – and create a supportive environment for all members of our diverse medical community. Finally, we need someone who understands and can help guide us through what often seems like a quagmire of health care financing, so as to ensure that our Medical Center and Health System enjoy a strong financial foundation to support strengthening of the biomedical sciences and the development and allocation of resources to promote excellence in teaching, research, and patient care.

Finding a leader with these characteristics was a big task, but our search process was equal to it. I am sorry that his leadership responsibilities on the board of a Partnership for a Drug-Free America prevents Roy Bostock, who chaired this search, from being with us. I’m pleased, however, that Dr. Charles Hammond and so many members of the Chancellor’s Search Committee are here, as we owe them a deep debt of gratitude for identifying Victor Dzau and helping us persuade him and his wife Ruth to join the Duke community. In a recent email to me and President-elect Brodhead, Roy reminded us that Dr. Dzau was “recommended unanimously by the Chancellor’s Search Committee – whose members were broadly representative of the Medical Center/Health System, the total university, and the Durham community. We believe Dr. Dzau is the right person at the right time in the perfect place. We believe his academic credentials, his clinical experiences, and his leadership talents will continue to build on the very strong foundation that exists at the Duke Medical Center and Health System.”

After consulting widely, including with many of the people in this room and with leaders of academic medicine across the country, and finally with the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, President-elect Brodhead and I reached the same conclusion as did the search committee. It is no accident that these judgments – from the search committee to the executive committee – have been unanimous, because all of us believe that Victor Dzau combines a remarkable breadth of professional experience with the personal qualities and vision needed to lead one of the world’s great academic medical centers. His impressive experience and balance as a physician-scientist, and as a strategist and leader in Boston’s competitive health care arena, will serve Duke extremely well. We believe he is the ideal person to join our team and build on Duke’s excellence in patient care, research, and education.

I’d like to ask President-elect Richard Brodhead to say a few words, and then invite Dr. Dzau to speak with you about his decision.