Paul Campbell Erwin, MD, MPH

Born in Alabama (with a banjo on my knee) last century (1957). Graduate (B.S., cum laude) of the University of the South (Sewanee); MD at the University of Alabama in Birmingham; Residency at the University of Virginia affiliated hospitals program in Roanoke and Salem, VA; MPH (in International Health) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health; Fellow in International Health, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. Boarded in Internal Medicine and Public Health/General Preventive Medicine; Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine. Scholar, CDC/University of California Public Health Leadership Institute, 1995. Graduate of Mrs. Reed's kindergarten class of 1962. Employed by the Tennessee Department of Health, East Tennessee since 1990, with a year's stint at the Buncombe County Health Department in Asheville NC. As Regional Director, I am responsible for public health for 15 counties, predominantly rural, Appalachia. Total catchment population 700,000 people. And one recent rabid cat that was hell on wheels.

I am particularly focussed on community development through community participation in health. We have been, over the past several years, facilitating a community-based health assessment model known as Community Diagnosis, through locally based county health councils. At the same time we have been actively engaged in a comprehensive strategic planning process at the regional level. We are now embarking on efforts to implement NACCHO's Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP). I have been a member of the NACCHO workgroup that developed MAPP, and in June assumed the position of Chair of the MAPP Work Group.