Pediatric cardiologist and long-time activist Dr. Brenda Armstrong has been appointed director of admissions and associate dean of the Medical School.
Armstrong, who assumes her new duties July 1, will replace Dr. Lois Pounds, who is retiring after serving in that position for nine years. Members of the Board of Trustees approved the appointment at their quarterly meeting held on Feb. 23.
"A long-time member of the Duke faculty, Dr. Armstrong is an excellent teacher and skilled clinician who is greatly appreciated by all her students," said Dr. Dan Blazer, dean of medical education. "She has devoted considerable time and energy developing the best in all of our medical students."
A committee consisting of faculty members, department chairs and medical students selected Armstrong, a North Carolina native, after conducting an extensive search that began last fall.
"I'm very honored. I consider it a real challenge, given the extraordinary pressures on health care today," Armstrong said Friday. "It's exciting to be in a position to identify those people who are going to be the leaders of health care in the next century."
"We're in a situation where we're going to have to train people well, but we also have to train them not just as technicians, but also [as healers who] have a requisite understanding of the larger picture in which health care exists so that we end up increasing access to medicine for a larger set of the population," Armstrong said.
She added that meeting this goal of increased access would require more creative leadership on the part of future doctors. Biomedical research will maintain a significant presence in the training of medical students, she said.
Armstrong said she is committed to diversifying and increasing opportunities for women, underrepresented minorities and individuals who want to return to medicine at a later stage in their lives. Armstrong is active in minority affairs both at the Medical Center and at the University. She is chair of the Medical School's Minority Affairs Committee and co-directs the University's Strategic Plan for Black Faculty Development.
She has been a leader in minority affairs since her undergraduate days at the University. During her senior year, she participated in the 1969 takeover of the Allen Building by black students protesting racial discrimination at the University.
After receiving her medical degree from the St. Louis University School of Medicine in 1974 and completing a one-year internship in pediatrics at the University of California at Los Angeles Center for Health Sciences, Armstrong returned to Duke for her pediatric residency and a fellowship in pediatric cardiology. In 1979, she joined the Duke faculty as an assistant professor of pediatrics and is currently associate professor of pediatrics and director of fellowship training in pediatric cardiology.
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