Mississippi Today spoke with Dr. Woodward about his experience leading the Medical Center through the pandemic, and the lessons that can be learned for medical practice. Editor’s Note: This interview was edited for length. Mississippi Today: How has this pandemic changed, re-enforced or challenged your leadership style? I’ve seen hospitals shift work culture and family culture. Can you tell me if the pandemic has impacted culture at UMMC, and how it affected your leadership style? Dr. LouAnn Woodward says that this is a very unusual situation from the perspective of health care and the workforce. Even though most things were shut down, we still needed to keep operations open 24 hours a day. We also had to continue to support critical operations such as critical care patients, hospital patients, and trauma systems. People still had heart attacks, strokes, car accidents and heart attacks. While one part of the company was shifting gears, another part went into overdrive. This made it very difficult and required a structure that is 24-7, 365. It’s not something we can change easily. This structure is not designed to allow for flexibility in terms of staffing or services. It was difficult enough to even comprehend that. Mississippi Today: How did UMMC take this time to consider inclusion? It’s a double-edged problem. The pandemic disproportionately affected people of color. But now, with this moment of reckoning about police brutality, organizations have re-emphasized their commitment to look at race disparities more deeply. Can you tell us how UMMC is dealing with that? What steps are you taking to reduce biases in medical settings and to support minority health care workers. Dr. LouAnn Woodward, I personally can speak to diversity and inclusion at the Medical Center. It’s fascinating, it’s interesting, and it encourages the nation (and Mississippi have) the awareness of racism and the willingness to speak out against mistreatment and police brutality. While I believe that the majority of policemen are good people and great people, I have met many of them. However, like all people there are bad apples. However, I believe the energy and feeling around this suggests that it is past time for people to take action and try to solve this problem. But the time is now. There seems to be a new energy surrounding the topic of race relations and injustices. It feels more present than in the past. We have a diverse student population, both in terms of the number of students enrolled in our schools and their future as health care professionals. We have more minority students than the national average, and there are many women enrolled in the program. We are working hard to increase our African American enrollment in the School of Medicine. Although our numbers are higher than the national average, we believe there is still room for improvement due to the state’s demographic makeup and state. We are always striving to make the picture more balanced, but you can see the diversity in the composition of our deans, department chairs, and other leaders at the medical center. It’s always a work in progress. I doubt anyone would say that we are satisfied or feel that we have had all the growth and progress that we need. But we’re making good strides and I’m proud. Mississippi Today: How has the pandemic affected health models, both logistically and medically. What lessons have we learned? This includes how hospitals are run, and how we, as a state, understand and look at social determinants and health disparities. We know that Mississippians of color have been most severely affected. Dr. LouAnn Woodward says that while there were some silver linings to all his experiences, I believe that some of them have also taught us some important lessons and required some adjustments. I shared with someone that I was proud of my pathology and microbiology lab team who created a test for coronavirus in just weeks. While it was a well-known virus, it was not something we were aware of. Although I spoke to the teams a year ago about the possibility of developing a test for this particular virus, they were able to do it in weeks. It has been possible to do things that would normally take a lot of time. People focused their efforts and focussed their attention so we were able accomplish many things quickly. Mississippi Today: What does this moment mean for Mississippi and UMMC? I know that we are all just going through life, especially in hospital settings. But if there’s anything that can be learned or improved upon, what would that look like for the state and its relationship with medicine and science? Dr. LouAnn Woodward says that I have been extremely grateful, happy, and grateful for the support of the team during this crisis. This could be the patient care units, the higher level of care we can offer, the research side of a test or one of our faculty members working out how to make a ventilator from locally available parts. These are examples of resourcefulness and the willingness of the Academic Medical Center to take on the challenge and do the right thing. That’s been a good thing. I believe that as we move forward, and we are not in a crisis situation, there is an unmistakable link between economic viability and economic healthiness, between jobs and education, and between health care and health care. They are all interconnected and you can’t separate them. I believe that the state’s future success and growth will be better if they have all the parts and pieces working together, including the economics, education and health care. It’s like the old saying that we all rise together, or we don’t. They are just as interwoven in an individual’s health, financial stability, success, education, and financial stability as they are in a state’s. It was fun to work with the state leadership at a different level. I believe it is important that we maintain that type of relationship as the state develops._x000D