N.C. loses esteemed rural health care leader

Note: A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on July 17 in the Alumni Center at the Carolina Club at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reprinted by permission of The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina

By Amy Gardner, N&O Staff Writer

Jim Bernstein, a former assistant secretary with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and a national leader in the improvement of rural health care, died Sunday of bladder cancer. He was 62.

Bernstein retired from state government Sept. 30 after working 31 years to improve health care in rural North Carolina. He launched the nation's first state-level office of rural health, devoting himself to attracting doctors, nurses and clinics to isolated communities that needed them.

Today, the impact of Bernstein's work is plain: 83 clinics launched with Bernstein's help continue to operate independently across the state.

" He was the father of rural health nationally. It's not just North Carolina," said Tork Wade, who worked alongside Bernstein for three decades and succeeded him as director of the N.C. Office of Research, Demonstrations and Rural Health Development.

" You cross the state, and there are very few communities where there's not something there, a clinic or a project, that hasn't benefited from all that he's done," Wade said.

One of Bernstein's biggest accomplishments was recruiting doctors to rural parts. One of his biggest rewards was watching the health of rural communities improve. In some communities with new clinics, infant mortality rates fell by half.

Bernstein's goals evolved over the years. Today, the office he launched continues to oversee the rural health centers program, but it also runs a health program for farm workers; a prescription assistance program for the poor; and a program that aims to improve health access for the urban poor.

" What was magic about Jim was that he could work with such a wide breadth of people," said Nancy Lane, a health care management consultant. "He encouraged people to tackle the impossible, all the while making it look like lots of fun and an adventure."

And Bernstein wasn't done. Though he retired in the fall, he had stayed on, without pay, as an adviser on rural health issues for Health and Human Services Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom. He also planned to continue working for a nonprofit foundation that focuses on rural health.

" We had lots of things we were going to do," Hooker Odom said Monday. "It's just one of the saddest days in my life."

Bernstein lived in Chapel Hill. In his final months, as word of his illness spread, health care providers and local leaders across the state wrote him to offer support and to tell him.

Copyright 2005 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

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Last Modified: June 29, 2005 July 1, 2005