Georgetown has selected Dr. Norman J. Beauchamp, a higher education leader in health sciences, a clinical researcher and a radiologist who has advanced the treatment of stroke, as the new executive vice president for health sciences at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and executive dean of Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Beauchamp will begin his role on July 1, 2024.
Beauchamp currently serves as the executive vice president for health sciences at Michigan State University (MSU), where he spearheaded the creation of the Office of Health Science, which brought together the university’s clinical practice, osteopathic (DO) and allopathic (MD) medical schools, and graduate and undergraduate nursing education.
Beauchamp also served as the co-architect, alongside leaders at Henry Ford Health, in establishing a 30-year partnership between MSU Health Sciences and Henry Ford Health that includes a $2.5-billion-dollar initiative in Detroit for a new academic medical center, a research building that will focus on health disparities and a neurofibromatosis institute, and affordable housing in partnership with the Detroit Pistons. In addition, he led the establishment of a 675,000-square-foot health innovation hub in Grand Rapids to advance human health research and innovation, and diversify sources of funding.
Previously, Beauchamp served as MSU’s associate provost and assistant vice president for health affairs and dean of the College of Human Medicine, his alma mater for his doctor of medicine degree.
“As we strengthen our medical center and deepen our university-wide commitment to health, I am excited and honored to welcome Dr. Beauchamp as the next leader of our GUMC,” Georgetown President John J. DeGioia wrote in a message to the community. “He brings tremendous leadership and energy and has demonstrated a deep dedication to our vision for the future of health sciences at Georgetown and the mission of our university.”
Leading With Values
Throughout his career, Beauchamp, a values-driven leader, has sought to help the greatest number of people by bridging academia, research, clinical care and industry partners.
“I believe that higher education does exist to address society’s greatest challenges,” he said. “I believe that too many people lack access to health and healing and hope. And I believe that the solution to providing what people deserve is bringing together the strengths of a university to bear in solving the health needs of our nation and world and, particularly, in addressing the health disparities that persist.”
Beauchamp has held top leadership positions at Johns Hopkins University, MSU and the University of Washington. As a neurointerventionalist radiologist, he has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and has made major advances in predicting, preventing and treating strokes.
At John Hopkins University, Beauchamp developed MRI imaging techniques to extend the time-sensitive treatment window for strokes so that more patients could be admitted for treatment. He worked with a cross-disciplinary team, including neurologists, a linguistics major, physicists, physiologists and graduate students. Beauchamp also ran the imaging core for the largest epidemiologic longitudinal study in stroke and heart disease, uncovering previously unknown predictors of stroke risk.
A Childhood on a Farm
Beauchamp credits two formative experiences in his childhood for fueling his work ethic and career path in medicine.
When he was seven years old, his parents moved his family from Boston to a farm in rural Michigan. It was up to Beauchamp and his three siblings to care for 200 chickens, 20 cows and four horses. Beauchamp remembers caring for sick cows and delivering eggs to neighbors on his morning egg route.
“[My parents] believed that taking responsibility for raising animals would imbue us with a sense of responsibility,” he said. “What we learned was that, whatever it took, when others or animals were depending on you, there was no excuse for not giving a best effort or being focused on the outcome.”
Beauchamp also grew up watching his mother, a mental health worker, care for community members in downtown Lansing, Michigan. She inspired his passion for health, he said.
“We would talk about how people struggle more often than they should, and that they’re often alone in times of need,” Beauchamp said. “I thought, maybe that’s my calling. How do I lessen the struggles of people and maybe combine that with a focus on health? That led me to my calling, my purpose. My mom was one of my heroes in that work.”
An Interdisciplinary Career
Beauchamp earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at Michigan State, studying in Lyman Briggs College, which bridges the sciences, humanities and social sciences. He was fascinated by the brain, and, after a family member suffered a stroke, became more interested in how to lessen the impacts.
After medical school, he completed two fellowships in neuroradiology and in neurointerventional radiology at Johns Hopkins University, as well as his master’s degree in biostatistics and epidemiology. While at Hopkins, Beauchamp used statistical methods to improve access, remove inefficiencies and waste for patients, staff and faculty, and lower costs in health care. He emphasized a “culture of caring built on a foundation of trust,” that, when combined with qualitative approaches, empowered both care team members and patients and family, he said. The work earned him a role as the vice chair of clinical operations in 1999.
He brought this approach to patient care to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he served as department chair and president of the physician practice plan. As a professor of radiology, neurosurgery and industrial engineering and systems design, he aligned patient- and family-centered diagnosis and treatment with systems optimization, he said. He also focused on training the next generation of clinicians and scientists, and, with his team, connected graduate students in industrial engineering with residents in radiology to inform and improve their approach to health care.
While at the University of Washington, Beauchamp helped launch a wellness committee to help students, faculty and staff incorporate wellness practices into their lives. He also served as founding medical director of a Seattle-based medical clinic that has offered free medical services to more than 30,000 people for the past 10 years.
At Michigan State University, Beauchamp chaired the sustainable health pillar of the MSU Strategic Plan 2030 to better learn from and serve patients, students, faculty, staff and communities served.
His work collaborating with industry partners in Michigan to build new health hubs and partnerships also reinforces the importance of higher education in making a concrete difference, he said.
“The work in Grand Rapids and Detroit emphasize that higher education and health systems are able to come together in ways that very directly address the social determinants of health,” he said. “In addition, the partnerships create an ideal ecosystem for education, research, clinical care and health innovation.”
His Approach at Georgetown
While Beauchamp’s career has taken him across disciplines, he has stayed true to the purpose he gleaned from his mom.
He said this same guidepost and his Catholic faith tradition led him to Georgetown, where he was drawn to its Catholic, Jesuit mission, its focus on service and health disparities, its innovations, research and advancements in care, and the ability to work across three schools — medicine, nursing, and health — and the National Cancer Institute-designated Lombardi Comprehensive Care Center in the nation’s capital.