Caetano Will Do Double Duty as Dean of Two UT Schools in Dallas
HOUSTON – (June 2, 2006) – On Aug. 7, Raul Caetano, M.D., Ph.D., will start a new, dual role both as regional dean of the Dallas regional campus of the UT School of Public Health and as dean of the UT Southwestern Allied Health Sciences School. Both schools are housed in the same building at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.
At the allied health school, Caetano succeeds Gordon Green, M.D., who is stepping down to take another position within the school after serving as dean since 1991.
Raul Caetano, M.D., Ph.D.
“Dr. Caetano’s leadership will bring both schools closer together and spur collaboration between students and faculty in hopes of achieving more integration in education, research and service,” said Alfred Gilman, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president for academic affairs, provost and dean of UT Southwestern Medical School. “The idea is to make medicine, allied health and public health work in tandem to improve clinical services and prevent disease and health problems in the community.”
Guy S. Parcel, Ph.D., dean of the UT School of Public Health, which has its main campus in Houston, expressed his enthusiastic support for the dual role. “I have great confidence in Dr. Caetano’s leadership for both schools and view this as an opportunity to develop stronger partnerships between public health, allied health and medicine,” he said.
Caetano said he believes his new double-deanship can help build a bridge between UT Southwestern and the UT School of Public Health to ensure the quality and future growth of each. “I have one foot in each institution, so I am going to be trying to establish a bridge,” he said. “We’re going to be working together.”
The Dallas regional campus of the UT School of Public Health has 90 students seeking master of public health degrees with courses in epidemiology, biostatistics, health promotion and behavioral science, environmental and occupational health, and health administration. The UT Southwestern Allied Health Sciences School has more than 300 students seeking bachelor’s and master’s degrees in various health professions, from physical therapy to physician assistant to clinical dietetics.
Caetano, 61, joined the UT the School of Public Health at Houston in 1998, where he also is a professor of epidemiology. A native of Brazil, he earned an M.D. in psychiatry from the State University of Rio de Janeiro in 1969.
After studying psychiatry at the University of London in England, he came to the United States in 1978 and earned a Master of Public Health in behavioral sciences and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1983, he began working as a senior scientist for the California-based Alcohol Research Group, a National Institutes of Health-supported national alcohol research center that studies alcohol and drug use and related topics, and was director by the time he left to join the UT System in 1998.
Caetano currently is principal investigator for a five-year study funded by a $4.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine differences in rates of alcohol-related problems across four Hispanic national groups in four major urban areas of the U.S. He has published on various topics, including the epidemiology of substance abuse, in dozens of scientific journals and serves on the editorial boards of many substance-abuse publications. Caetano also is an adjunct professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and a member of the advisory boards of a number of community agencies.
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