UNC recruits new Chair, Department of Surgery
Caprice C. Greenberg, MD, MPH, has been named chair of the UNC School of Medicine Department of Surgery. She will begin her work in the role on August 15.
Greenberg is a world renowned health services researcher and surgical oncologist. She most recently served as chair of the Department of Surgery at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
She is a leader in the study of care delivery in operating rooms and innovative approaches to collaborative learning. She will bring research projects to the School of Medicine related to surgical coaching and methods to improve rural cancer care delivery.
Greenberg earned her MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and her Masters of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her general surgery residency was completed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and she completed her surgical oncology fellowship at the Dana – Farber/Partners Cancer Center in Boston.
Melina Kibbe, MD, FACS, served as chair of the UNC Department of Surgery from 2016 through 2021, and Matt Mauro, MD, served as interim chair since August 2021.
About UNC School of Medicine:
“Our mission is to improve the health and wellbeing of North Carolinians and others whom we serve. We accomplish this by providing leadership and excellence in the interrelated areas of patient care, education, and research. We strive to promote faculty, staff and learner development in a diverse, respectful environment where our colleagues demonstrate professionalism, enhance learning, and create personal and professional sustainability. We optimize our partnership with the UNC Health Care System through close collaboration and a commitment to service.”
“Our 20 clinical and 8 basic science departments are key in achieving excellence in research, education, and patient care. At the University of North Carolina, we are uniquely poised to harness opportunities to collaborate across departments and with other colleges and schools of the University, making ground-breaking foundational research and creative practice a reality.”
“We will promote health and provide superb clinical care while maintaining our strong tradition of reaching underserved populations and reducing health disparities across North Carolina and beyond.”
About Caprice C. Greenberg, MD, MPH:
Greenberg helped develop the concept of surgical coaching, which is modeled after athletic coaching and encourages continuous professional development throughout one’s career to set action plans, achieve goals and optimize performance. She formed The Academy for Surgical Coaching, a nonprofit group working to disseminate that practice across the country.
She is the principal investigator on several multimillion dollar grants aimed at improving surgical education, training and outcomes, including a $2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to train surgical oncologists; and a $2 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop a video-based collaborative learning program to help improve ventral hernia repairs.
Greenberg previously worked with the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology to help define the emerging field of Cancer Care Delivery Research (CCDR). She served on the NCI’s inaugural steering committee for CCDR, actively investigating how the health care system influences the care of cancer patients.
She developed the Surgical Collaborative of Wisconsin, a network of surgeons at three-quarters of the state’s hospitals, including all of the major health systems, who work together to create structured approaches to quality measurement and improvement.
Greenberg also created the Wisconsin Surgical Outcomes Research Program (WiSOR), a multi-investigator research program she directed until 2019. WiSOR was developed in 2011 to improve the quality, safety, effectiveness and efficiency of surgical care through research and innovation. When she joined the Department of Surgery faculty in 2011, there was no funding for health services research. Since then, nine faculty have obtained career development awards and seven faculty have been independently funded for a total of $39 million in awards.
Relevant Links
UNC School of Medicine: https://www.med.unc.edu/about/
Caprice C. Greenberg, MD, MPH: https://jagwire.augusta.edu/dr-caprice-greenberg-named-mcg-department-of-surgery-chair/
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