Blair D. Gifford :::
Blair D. Gifford
Graduated in 1973
Inducted in 2009
Blair Gifford, a 1973 LT graduate, earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago. His studies focused on medical sociology and economics, and that led him to work aimed at hospital administration in American hospitals, but ultimately toward health administration and health system development in other countries. In the early 1990s, while employed at the American Hospital Association in Chicago, Dr. Gifford led a research team that compared the health systems in the U.S., Germany and Canada. The report was in response to health reform legislation in the early years of the Clinton administration and served as a foundation for much of Gifford’s subsequent work. His work at the University of Colorado, as a professor of international health management in the Business School and School of Public Health, established him as a leading academic in the field of global health and international health services. Starting in 1997, Dr. Gifford developed the first international health management course in a health administration program in the U.S. By 2000, he expanded the course to include public health and health management of hospitals in developing nations. In 2002, he established the Center for Global Health in the University of Colorado system, the first inter-disciplinary center at the university. In 2008, he initiated the Global Health Symposium, the largest university-based conference on global health in the Rocky Mountain area. The goal of Dr. Gifford’s work is to internationalize the profession of health administration in developing nations. His work does not mimic proven U.S. programs; rather, Dr. Gifford believes that any educational program for health administration professionals should be one that will result in the design of systems and policies consistent with the culture, resources and political climate of that country. He has ongoing research, education and service projects in India, China, Thailand, Ethiopia and Haiti. Additionally, Dr. Gifford is one of the most published authors on current health system developments in China. He was recently recognized as one of 30 international New Century Fulbright Scholars by the U.S. State Department and has served as a visiting professor at Yale and Northwestern universities.