Rev. Michael Rozier, S.J., assistant professor of health management and policy at Saint Louis University, will serve as a visiting Jesuit chair this semester in the department of health systems administration at the School of Nursing & Health Studies (NHS).

Rozier will be the first visiting Jesuit chair of the NHS, a position that aims to develop and advance the department’s degree offerings. As part of this role, Rozier will instruct a semester-long class in the health care management and policy program titled “Delivering Care Across the Continuum.” The class will explore questions of where and how health care in the United States is delivered, who pays for it, how health care quality is measured and the political aspects of policy reform. Rozier will also deliver the annual NHS Values Based Lecture, where NHS faculty reflect on their work through the school’s core values. 

Rozier said the opportunity to collaborate with members of the Georgetown community and conduct research in Washington, D.C., attracted him to the position.

“It’s a great opportunity to be in a great university for a semester and to teach really talented students, to meet colleagues across the university with whom I might continue my research and to be in Washington, D.C., for somebody like myself who studies health policy,” Rozier said in an interview with The Hoya.

His course, which is intended primarily for sophomore students, will cover the basics of health care delivery in the United States, according to Rozier. 

“We’ll be looking at all of those questions through the lens of patients, their family and friends who care for them and the physicians, nurses, therapists and other caregivers who encounter them,” Rozier said. “The goal is to consider the health care system through the lens of the people at its center.”

Having received a Ph.D. in health management and policy from the University of Michigan and a Master’s degree in Divinity from Boston College, Rozier’s work has centered on the intersection between ethics and public health policy, a combination of interests that contributed to his hiring, according to Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president for mission and ministry.

“Fr. Rozier is a young, vibrant Jesuit scholar and an outstanding addition to Georgetown as the Visiting Jesuit Chair this spring semester. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise on health ethics and public policy,” Bosco wrote in an email to The Hoya. 

The renewed focus on health inequity in light of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the NHS’ selection of Rozier as its Jesuit chair, according to Christopher King, chair of the department of health systems administration.

“Numerous events over the past few years have reminded us of the relationship between injustice and health. Moreover, COVID and its implications are testing the bandwidth of our healthcare infrastructure,” King wrote in an email to The Hoya. “At a time of so much uncertainty, these circumstances make this an ideal moment for a Jesuit Chair in the Department of Health Systems Administration.”

The World Health Organization has warned that rolling out COVID-19 booster shots in developed nations while vulnerable populations in developing nations struggle to receive their first dose could prolong the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Rozier said his Values Based Lecture titled “Health Systems and Human Dignity: Moral Imagination as a Tool For Reform,” which will cover the necessity of technical solutions and the consideration of moral questions in managing health systems, has been framed with the challenges posed by the pandemic. 

“One of the things that I hope that it does in the long term is that it gives us a greater sense of solidarity, that we see that my health is not just about me or my close connections alone. My health and everyone else’s health is impacted by people who are towns, states and countries away,” Rozier said.

As a Jesuit, Rozier’s said religious vocation has informed his people-first approach to teaching and researching health care management and policy.

“In our Jesuit formation, we work alongside communities that are marginalized. I’ve worked throughout Latin America. I’ve worked with people experiencing homelessness. I’ve worked with asylum seekers,” Rozier said. “And it’s been being with those people as they try to access the health care system and to get the kind of care that they desperately need and finding that there are often too many barriers.”