GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- Dr. Gwen Wagstrom Halaas, a family physician and associate professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Minnesota, has been named associate dean for academic and faculty affairs at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Dr. Halaas is a graduate of Concordia College, Moorhead, and Harvard Medical School. She completed her family medicine residency with the University of Minnesota Medical School at Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul. Halaas also earned a Master of Business Administration in medical group management from the University of St. Thomas.
Halaas has practiced family medicine and worked in medical education in Minnesota as assistant director and director of two family medicine residency programs, director of the Rural Physician Associate Program and founding director of the Center for Interprofessional Education. The Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians honored her as “2008 Teacher of the Year.” Halaas has extensive administrative experience in health care organizations. She was medical director for UCare at the University of Minnesota, and she served as associate medical director of HealthPartners, a health care system in Minnesota.
“I am very pleased that Dr. Halaas will be joining the School’s senior management team,” said Joshua Wynne, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H., interim vice president for health affairs and interim dean of the UND medical school. “She brings a wealth of experience and is highly regarded by her colleagues at the University of Minnesota. We are delighted that we were able to recruit her to the University of North Dakota.”
Halaas has lectured nationally and internationally on rural health education and interprofessional education. She is nationally known for her work in ministerial health and wellness and has written two books—“Clergy, Retirement and Wholeness” and “The Right Road: Life Choices for Clergy.”
She is profiled in Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan’s book, “Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care,” which profiles 15 dedicated health care providers whom Mullan describes as humanist, comprehensive, efficient and flexible; doctors who build on the rich legacy of the past and the rich tradition of care in medicine and nursing.
Halaas and her husband Rev. Mark Halaas, a pastor for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, have three adult children: Per, Liv and Erik.
Contact: Denis MacLeod, Communications Coordinator, Center for Rural Health,(701) 777-3300, dmacleod@medicine.nodak.edu
