Robert J. Greczyn Jr., the retired CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, is now a Gillings Visiting Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The appointment was effective Oct. 1.
 
In his new role as visiting professor of health policy and management, Greczyn will share his health care experience with faculty and staff members and students throughout the school, according to this UNC news release.

He will lecture on insurance, health care and health care reform and serve as a policy adviser and resource for faculty members and students.  School leaders will call upon Greczyn's experience and creative problem-solving to help catalyze and shape North Carolina's focus on reducing obesity.
 
"Bob Greczyn is known around the country for creating incentives, programs and innovative quality initiatives to encourage positive health behavior," said Barbara K. Rimer, the school's dean. "In a period in which we seek to understand the impact of health reform on health insurance and on people's health, having Bob Greczyn among us will be a tremendous asset. We're delighted to have him here, sharing his experiences in health care management and finance."
 
Greczyn earned a Master of Public Health degree in health policy and administration from UNC's public health school in 1981. He also completed the executive program in health care finance management at UNC.
 

When she was 15, Barbara Rimer was so crushed by the death of President John F. Kennedy that she wrote a letter of condolence and mailed it to JFK's widow.

Rimer, now the dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, never thought of it again until recently, when a historian in New Hampshire contacted her, asking permission to publish it as part of a new book of those condolence letters that Jackie Kennedy received after JFK's assassination.

Here's the story.

I didn't include the entire letter in the story, but here it is.

Dear Mrs. Kennedy,

Something vital is missing from the house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe it is youthfulness, a lovely young couple, two charming children, or maybe a guiding hand, a gay wit, and a special security people drew from his presence, all these things and more, Americans lost when Lee Harvey Oswald committed his heinous crime. These losses are irreplaceable.

Though you have lost a loving husband, Carolina and John a devoted father, Robert and his sisters and brother, a brother, Mr. & Mrs. Kennedy a son, and all Americans a cherished friend, we will not forget John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We share a wonderful memory though he died, still his ideals were not and will not [die] be buried. I promise you I will give body and soul to perpetuate the very ideals President Kennedy lived for. And I am sure he would wish to be remembered for his humanitarian beliefs. 

So now, in your time of grief, I offer to you and your children all I can, my deepest sympathy and a solemn promise for the future.

Sincerely yours, 

Barbara Rimer (15 yrs. old)

It wasn't that long ago that UNC system campuses were told to plan for budget cuts this year of up to four percent.

I bet deans and department heads today are sighing, waxing nostalgic and longing for those days.

Now, those who handle university budgets across the state are making contingency plans for cuts of up to 7 percent. So says Barbara Rimer, dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health over at UNC Chapel Hill. 

Here's her blog entry where she talks about it.