Suggested Introduction for a more academic flavored audience:
Rev. Dr Gary Gunderson is Professor of Public Health Science in the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Professor of the Health of the Public in the School of Divinity. He is visiting faculty at the University of Cape Town Division of Family Medicine and Public Health.
He serves as Vice President for FaithHealth at Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center which includes spiritual care, Clinical Pastoral Education and counseling centers in 35 locations across North Carolina as well as helping guide population health strategy for the service area. The Division sustains clinically relevant partnerships with hundreds of faith groups throughout the state in collaboration with other hospitals and community partners. Gary is known for more than two decades of creative work in the field of faith and public health initially at The Carter Center and Emory School of Public Health and then in Memphis, Tennessee where the ideas found ground through more than 700 congregational partners showing hard evidence of significant improved outcomes including mortality, cost and dramatically lower hospitalization.
Gary has authored six books including “Religion and the Health of the Public” with Dr. James Cochrance by Palgrave/McMillian. Deeply Woven Roots, by Fortress Press is widely used in seminaries since its publication in 1997 and recently embraced by the National Academies of Science Roundtable on Population Health for its model of relevant strengths. He has authored many articles and hundreds of presentations, often around novel concepts such as “religious health assets,” “boundary leadership” and, perhaps most evokative, the “leading causes of life.” He is secretary of Stakeholder Health, a learning group of more than 50 healthcare systems trying to learn their way across the sidewalk into complex living communities in deeply troubled times.
Gary is an ordained American Baptist minister with degrees from Candler School of Theology at Emory University and Doctor of Ministry at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta as well as an honorary doctorate from the Chicago Theological Seminary. Married to Dr. Teresa Cutts, also faculty at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, they have four daughters.
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