Bowen to step down as health services director

Princeton NJ -- Dr. Pamela Bowen will be stepping down as director of University Health Services at the end of the academic year in June.

Pamela Bowen

Bowen, who has been in that position since 1991, plans to leave the University to undertake a new project addressing issues in health care and health education for domestic and foreign students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

"I am grateful to Pamela Bowen for her leadership of University Health Services and, most important, for her commitment to ensuring that our students receive the best possible health care," said Janet Smith Dickerson, vice president for campus life.

Bowen said she is most proud of "building a highly competent professional, administrative and support staff devoted to serving the students and employees of the University." Part of that effort involved reorganizing the staff to centralize and consolidate services by function.

Another accomplishment during her tenure was bringing information technology into the health center, she said. "Our new medical management systems have improved our practice, given us access to more information about our patients in a better way and allowed us to track their health more effectively," she said.

Bowen said that the aim of her new venture will be to promote the delivery of optimal, culturally appropriate health care and health education in postsecondary institutions for national and international students from different cultures. "I plan to establish a program to educate professionals in higher education who advise, treat, counsel and teach students from other cultures and countries," she said.

She sees such a program taking shape through research, dissemination of information and networking (workshops, consultations and Internet strategy) -- all devoted to the cultural and medical issues involved in providing health care to culturally diverse students. "With the increase in international students coming to this country and the changing demographics of our domestic students, the time is good to take up these issues," she said.

Bowen has a longstanding interest in the subject. From 1990 to 1992, she chaired the NAFSA: Association of International Educators/American College Health Association Joint Committee on International College Health. She also has written several articles for professional journals on the topic.

Bowen came to Princeton from the University of Pittsburgh, where she served as staff physician and as medical administrator in the student health service between 1977 and 1991. She also has been a physician at Rutgers and Carnegie Mellon universities.

A past president of the American College Health Association, she received its Ruth Boynton Award for distinguished service in 2000 and was named a fellow of the association in 1994. Bowen also has been president of the Mid-Atlantic College Health Association and received its John Hargleroad Award for dedicated service in 1997. She is currently a member of the board of directors of the American College Health Foundation.

Also active in the community, Bowen is a trustee of the William Alexander Procter Foundation and chair of the oversight committee of the Episcopal Church at Princeton University.

Dickerson is in the process of convening a committee to search for Bowen's successor.