About Us

For many months, Howard University Health Science faculty, staff and students have come together to chart a path to the future. From June until now, we have been working to take the Health Sciences strategic plan from the 30,000 ft. view of our vision down to the street-level, where we will be able to execute on our goals and objectives.

When we ended the first of our large group meetings in June, we closed with an energetic spirit of excitement about the future of the Health Sciences Enterprise. Our new venture together was to focus on how to change the way we function as an organization, change the way we interact with each other and our customers every day, support better communication and provide for continuous feedback.

In July and August, several Town Hall meetings were conducted in the Hospital, School of Pharmacy, and in both Colleges of Dentistry and Medicine to continue our discussion of the future of the Health Sciences Enterprise. During our Town Hall meetings, we were able to have open discussions about our core values, our mission, and our vision for the organization. More than 300 Health Sciences Enterprise faculty, staff and administrators participated in these meetings over the summer. During these meetings, overwhelming support for the mission, vision, and value statements was given as well as some suggestions to further strengthen their wording and meaning. Your input resulted in the revision of our vision statement to read “Leaders in the advancement of healthcare and health equality, locally and globally.” We affirmed that our strategy would be through differentiation - meaning we have to distinguish the perceived value of the products and services that we offer through Howard University Health Sciences from those around us.

In two leadership team meetings in July and August, your work from the June meetings was integrated, summarized, and refined to answer the question, “If differentiation is our strategy, how specifically will we differentiate ourselves?” The input from 43 tables was distilled to five goals: Quality, Disease States, Cultural Competence, Operational Excellence, and Inspired Faculty and Staff. The charge for these groups was to develop objectives to support the goals, identify measures and targets, and develop initiatives and actions to achieve them. The work each group did was presented to executive leadership on November 15 and was summarized in a balanced scorecard. General action plans were also created by each goal team to support what they believed were priority initiatives and actions.

Our new goals were unveiled at two large group meetings on December 14 and 15. Now we will all begin the real work – developing detailed action plans that are in line with our strategies. Each of us will contribute to this part of the process, as we consider our own contribution to the success of the Enterprise.