William H. Frist
University Distinguished Professor in Health Care
Subject Area(s):
Health Care
Biography:
Professor Frist joins the faculty of the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management as part of a joint appointment with the Vanderbilt University Medical School (VUMC). Drawing upon his vast knowledge of and storied career in both medicine and politics, Frist will teach a new course that brings together Vanderbilt Health Care MBA students and fourth-year medical students to examine the financing, delivery and quality of health care in the United States and around the globe.
Board certified in both general and cardiothoracic surgery, Frist has performed over 150 heart and lung transplants, including the first lung transplant and first pediatric heart transplant in Tennessee and the first successful combined heart-lung transplant in the South. In 1986, Frist became director of VUMC’s heart and lung transplantation program and later founded the Southeast’s first multi-organ, multidisciplinary transplant center at Vanderbilt, which quickly became recognized as one of the premier transplant facilities in the nation. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed medical articles, over 400 newspaper articles and five books on topics such as bioterrorism and transplantation.
In 1994, Frist embarked on a career in public office and won election to the U.S. Senate for the state of Tennessee, one of only two physicians elected to that body since 1928. In 2006, his colleagues unanimously chose him to serve as the 16th Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. Prior to his retirement from the Senate in 2007 after his pledged two terms of service, he was a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, where he served as the congressional representative to the United Nations General Assembly in the 107th Congress.
Frist also currently serves as Partner and Chairman of the Executive Board of Cressey & Company LP and was the 2007-2008 Frederick H. Schultz Professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
In addition to leading annual medical mission trips to Africa as part of World Medical Mission, Frist serves as co-chair of the ONE Campaign’s presidential initiative (ONE Vote ’08) and Save the Children’s “Survive to Five” Campaign; he’s also served as chair of Hope through Healing Hands, which promotes improved quality of life for communities around the world. His other current board service includes Africare, the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Conscience, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows and the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project
Education:
A.B., Princeton, 1974
M.D., Harvard, 1978
Course(s) Taught:
- MGT 510: Health Policy: Business and Medicine
Area(s) of Expertise:
Health Care Management
Podcast(s) & Video:
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