Interview with John Kralewski

Abstract

John Kralewski begins by describing his background, including his education, his service in the Air Force, his early career, and why he went into the health sciences. He discusses his experiences as student in pharmacy and then in hospital administration at the UMN. He discusses the Program in Hospital Administration at UMN; hospital administration as a field in the 1960s and 1970s; the School of Public Health; funding; his research; efforts to introduce mandatory generic prescribing in the 1960s; pharmacy as a profession; nursing; the divisions within the School of Public Health in the 1960s; leadership in the health sciences at the UMN; University Hospitals; other hospitals in the Twin Cities; and the University of Minnesota’s decision to sell University Hospitals to Fairview. He talks about Gaylord Anderson, James Hamilton, Cherie Perlmutter, Stephen Joseph, Lyle French, Frank Cerra, and others in leadership and administrative position in the Health Sciences. In his second interview, John Kralewski discusses his experiences as assistant vice president for Health Sciences. He talks about the Center for Health Services Research; health services research at Minnesota and around the country; working with the Minnesota state legislature; rural health care; the Health Information Foundation (at the University of Chicago); moving the Center for Health Services Research out of the vice president’s office and into the School of Public Health; the Hospital Administration program; graduate programs in Public Health; relations between the Academic Health Center administration and the state legislature; the relationship between the health sciences units, and health sciences education and funding. He discusses Lyle French, Neal Vanselow, and Robert Kane.