Regional One Health President and CEO Reginald Coopwood, MD is one of the 2022 inductees in Belmont University’s Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame.
Dr. Coopwood’s leadership at Regional One Health has led to expanded clinical expertise, improved access to care throughout the community, a successful complex care program, health care innovation and more.
The Health Care Hall of Fame honors individuals who, like Dr. Coopwood, have made a lasting positive impact on health care in the State of Tennessee.
Reginald Coopwood, MD, president and CEO of Regional One Health, is one of Belmont University’s 2022 Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame inductees.
The Health Care Hall of Fame was created in 2015 by Belmont University in Nashville, the McWhorter Society and the Nashville Health Care Council, a founding partner. Its mission is to honor those who have made significant and lasting contributions to the health and health care industries. Honorees must be practitioners, executives, entrepreneurs, mentors, teachers, scientists, researchers, innovators or any person with a connection to the health or health care field. Among the accomplished nominees, inductees were chosen by a selection committee made up of health care leaders in various sectors from across the state. Selected inductees represent some of Tennessee’s greatest health and health care pioneers, leaders and innovators.
Dr. Coopwood’s contributions to health care can be felt today and will be felt for years to come. Among his recent accomplishments:
- Strengthening Regional One Health’s relationship with University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). An important outgrowth of this relationship is UT Regional One Physicians (UTROP), the largest academic physician group in the Mid-South with more than 200 physicians and advanced practitioners covering a vast number of medical specialties which now provides services to Regional One Health patients.
- Growing Regional One Health’s services to better care for the community. This includes enlarging the footprint of primary care access and specialty services in the community as well as building cancer care services through the addition of medical and surgical oncologists providing outpatient and inpatient cancer care.
- Establishing ONE Health, a complex care program that helps connect patients to medical care and navigate social determinants of health such as finding housing and food; applying for insurance, Social Security or disability benefits; obtaining skills training or GED certification; and more.
- Creating the Center for Innovation, a place for innovators to test the viability, desirability and feasibility of promising ideas and help companies validate their business model or clinical use case, in turn giving our community access to the latest technological advancements in health care.
In addition to Dr. Coopwood, the 2022 Health Care Hall of Fame inductees are:
- David Gregory, MD, Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Founder and Medical Director and Chairman of the board at Siloam Health; Oscar E. Edwards National Award for Volunteerism and Community Service recipient.
- Ned Ray McWherter, 46th Governor of Tennessee (1987-1995); Former Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives; former member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service; led the Tennessee General Assembly to pass legislation to create a medical school at East Tennessee State University and replace the state’s Medicaid program with TennCare.
- Ching-Hon Pui, M.D., Chair of the Department of Oncology and the Fahad Nassar Al-Rashid Chair of Leukemia at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Co-Director of the Hematological Malignancies Program for St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center; Director of the St. Jude China Program; American Cancer Society Professor.
- Randy Wykoff, M.D., M.P.H.&T.M., Founding Dean of East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health; Former Senior Vice President for International Operations at Project HOPE; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Former Associate Commissioner for Operations for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Board-certified pediatrics and preventive medicine physician with certification in tropical medicine.
In addition to recognizing Tennessee’s most influential health and health care leaders, the Health Care Hall of Fame serves as an ongoing educational resource to document the rich history that has contributed to Tennessee’s position as the nation’s health care capital. Honorees will be recognized at a celebration and reception in October.