Therese Zink named chair of Boonshoft School of Medicine Department of Family Medicine

Therese M. Zink

Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine has named Therese M. Zink, M.D., M.P.H., chair of its Department of Family Medicine, effective Jan. 20, 2014.

Zink comes to Wright State from the University of Minnesota (UM) in Minneapolis, where she served as a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Rural Physician Associate Program. She also served as director of UM’s Global Family Medicine Pathway, drawing from international medical experience in the republics of Russia, including Chechnya and Ingushetia, and Brazil and Central America.

Previously, she served as a researcher and physician in the Olmstead Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., and as an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

Zink has extensive expertise in the areas of family violence, sexual assault, women’s health, rural health care delivery and education, international health, medical professionalism and creative writing. She has conducted research on better care in the medical office for families living with violence and examined the costs of transforming medical practices and how to implement guidelines for chronic kidney disease.

A native Daytonian, Zink attended Carroll High School in Dayton. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English at Marquette University in Wisconsin. She returned to Dayton to attend premed classes at Wright State, while she worked as unit clerk and aid in the Emergency Department at Dayton Children’s Hospital.

She earned her M.D. from The Ohio State University in 1985 and served her residency in family medicine at Ramsey (Regions) Medical Center in Minnesota. Zink earned her Master of Public Health degree at the University of Minnesota in 1992.

“We are excited that Dr. Zink will be returning home to Dayton to serve as chair of our Department of Family Medicine,” said Marjorie Bowman, M.D., M.P.A., dean of the Boonshoft School of Medicine. “With her exceptional energy and broad range of expertise — from health care delivery and women’s health issues to rural medicine, global health, research and more — she will be essential to helping us meet the health care challenges of the future.”

In 2011, Zink was named a Rural Health Hero by the Minnesota Rural Health Association. In 2012, the National Rural Health Association awarded her the Distinguished Educator Award. She served on the Minnesota Governor’s Health Reform Task Force from 2011-12 and was named among 100 influential health care leaders in Minnesota by the Minnesota Physician in 2012.

The author of numerous articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals, Zink has also published several books. She recently published Confessions of a Sin Eater: A Doctor’s Reflections and edited the anthologies The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader and Becoming a Doctor: Reflections by Minnesota Medical Students.

Zink was recently featured in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) newsletter, AAMC Reporter, for her book The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader, a diverse compilation of essays, poems, and short stories written by doctors and health professionals in rural communities across the nation.