Title:Plan for new schools underscores health focus at Georgetown

The School of Nursing and School of Health, planned for July 2022, will build on the foundation of the current School of Nursing & Health Studies (NHS), which has continued a tradition of nursing education that started at Georgetown in 1903, while broadening to other health disciplines built over the past two decades since NHS was established.

This organizational direction complements recent initiatives in the health sciences at Georgetown, including a partnership renewal with MedStar Health, the launch of an interdisciplinary Health Justice Alliance, and a university-wide Global Health Initiative.

“Our commitment to health—to improving the human condition—is integral to our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution,” says Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia.

“We take this next step as we confront our nation’s worst health crisis in a century—a powerful reminder of the challenges we face and the urgency of envisioning new responses to health education, healthcare delivery, health disparities and health equity, and healthcare policy at the local, national, and global level.”

In 2019, the university began a Health and Health Sciences Strategy Initiative at Georgetown. The plan for the two schools emerged from this continuing work.

“Our health and health care challenges here at home and around the world have been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Dr. Edward Healton, the medical center’s executive vice president of health sciences. “Sustainable solutions will not come from any one discipline or any one approach, but from a meaningful, collaborative, and interdisciplinary effort. And as history has demonstrated time and again, the academic setting, especially like ours at Georgetown, provides the ideal incubator where meaningful ideas emerge and change occurs.”

“There has been no time in history when the importance of health to every sector of our lives—economic, political, cultural, social—has been more apparent,” says Carole Roan Gresenz, in- terim dean of the School of Nursing & Health Studies. “At this important and dynamic time in health and health care, George- town is ready to leverage a new structure to best advance our education, research, and service missions during a time of great need and great change.”

We welcome your questions and feedback on this exciting plan. Please contact us at nhscommunications@georgetown.edu.