Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

Early on, most of Dr. H. David Wilson’s friends figured he’d grow up to be a veterinarian.

“I was kind of a cowboy,” said Wilson, new dean at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita. “While I was in grade school, my father and his partner bought a farm. So, growing up I pitched lots of hay, shoveled grain…rode horseback. We raised purebred Aberdeen Angus cattle, so I shoveled a fair amount of manure as well.”

Wilson’s mother was a nurse, his father a funeral director in Johnston City, Ill., a small town about 30 miles east of Missouri, 45 miles north of Kentucky. The family’s doctor lived two houses away.

“Since I was five years old, I always wanted to be doctor,” said Wilson, who’s now 70 years old.

The local veterinarian also encouraged him to consider medical school.

In 1961, Wilson graduated from Wabash College, a small, men-only liberal arts college in Crawfordsville, Ind., with degrees in zoology and chemistry.

Five years later, he graduated from St. Louis School of Medicine, completing a pediatric internship at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center and a residency in pediatrics at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington.

Wilson spent two years in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, mostly “caring for dependents’ children and delivering babies” at the base in Key West, Fla. He later completed a National Institutes of Health fellowship on pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.

“After that, I returned to the University of Kentucky and spent the next 22 years climbing the ranks from associate professor, to professor, to vice chairman of the department of pediatrics, and, later, associate dean for academic affairs,” Wilson said.

His tenure at the University of Kentucky included a sabbatical in virology at the Institute of Child Health in London, England.

In 1995, Wilson was named dean at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Grand Forks.

During his 14-year tenure, Wilson had a hand in doubling the school’s research efforts and in pioneering the concept of patient-centered learning.

Wilson said he hopes to replicate those successes in Wichita. He’s already begun soliciting private-sector support for converting the medical school’s two-year curriculum to a four-year program and in the process, doubling its enrollment. LINK TO OTHER STORY

“I think this can happen within the next few years. That’s certainly our desire,” he said. “Wichita is a wonderful small city with a lot of good people and a long history of educating physicians for the state of Kansas. Half the students who train here choose to stay here. That’s considerably better than the national average, which is 29 percent.”

Wilson assumed the Wichita deanship on July 1, 2009.

He has three grown daughter, two grandchildren. He is an avid, reader, gardener, birdwatcher, and wine enthusiast.