COLLEEN CONWAY-WELCH Being Proactive

Serving both as Dean of Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing and as a member of the IOM Council, Colleen Conway-Welch has important and clear perspectives on the role the Institute can play in assuring that quality health care is available to all Americans.

“During a period when the subject of health care policy has engendered heated and not always evidence-based debate, the IOM has provided an essential voice of clarity, reason, and purpose,” Colleen observes. “It has taken on some of the most difficult and often controversial issues, and addressed them in a manner that is unique and substantive -- from the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the ‘80s to the shortcomings of our health care system today.”

A hallmark of the Institute’s effectiveness, she believes, is its willingness and ability to take on issues from which many health policy leaders shy away. But maintaining this proactive stance requires that the Institute have a pool of financial resources from which it can draw for these purposes. (The landmark 1999 report To Err is Human, for example, was financed almost entirely through the IOM’s endowment and unrestricted funds.)

For this reason, when Colleen made her Campaign pledge to the IOM -- a $25,000 bequest written into her will -- she directed it to the President’s Discretionary Fund. And, as she found, bequests are among the easiest and most flexible ways to make a charitable donation to the Academies.

(Members who decide to make gifts to the Academies through bequests in their wills are asked to contact the

National Academies Development Office, so that you may receive proper recognition for the contribution.)

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