Shed Boren '87 By Greg Holland Friday, September 26, 2003
Shed Boren '87 2003 Citation of Merit Recipient Chief Executive Officer, Sister Emmanuel Hospital
Barely three years after completing his master's of social work from the University of Houston, Shed Boren was living in Miami Beach and working as a Social Worker with people living with HIV. It didn't take him long to recognize the relationship between HIV and poverty. "Those with the disease were becoming poor, and the newly infected were poorer people," he says.
With the initial idea of helping the uninsured, he started an AIDS program in 1992 at Mercy Hospital in Miami. "Rather than starting a clinic-which generally are not good at encouraging people to receive primary care during the early stages of the virus-we used private physicians to provide care for indigent patients." That aspect set it apart from similar programs and earned recognition from Congress as a national model program.
An integrated service delivery network, the AIDS program provides medical care and social services to people living with HIV. "We developed wrap-around services to enable people to live independently: to buy food, pay utility bills and obtain transportation." He also started a program to pay insurance premiums for those who were about to lose private coverage, enabling them to remain in the private care system.
In its first 10 years, the hospital-based AIDS program grew substantially from an initial $500,000 grant to an annual budget of over $20 million with more than 6,000 people served in 2002. The focus of the program also has changed. "Today, we focus more on substance abuse treatment, counseling and medication adherence programs," he says.
Last year, Boren was named CEO of Sister Emmanuel Hospital in Miami, a long-term acute care center serving medically complex patients. "Our patient population includes the hardest to serve-ventilator dependent, infectious diseases, complicated wounds, etc. Our goal is to provide medical care, in addition to psychological, social and spiritual services, to those living in a period of transition." Boren says the three greatest influences in his life have been his family and friends, Gethsemane United Methodist Church in Houston and Southwestern, where he earned a degree in history. He credits the University with "providing a good place to become an adult. I learned to 'learn' at Southwestern and how to survive and thrive in a small, but diverse community." During his four years, he was able to take part in Southwestern's inaugural London program and study in Spain. "Studying abroad changed my perspective. I developed a thirst to see the world. I since have traveled to India, China, Cuba, Morocco and Japan, among others. My idea of relaxation is boating through the Amazon or exploring the Galapagos."
Boren earned an M.B.A. with a specialty in health administration from the University of Miami in 1995 and expects to complete his Ph.D. in medical sociology and epidemiology from the institution in May. He says, "I am interested in finding innovative ways to provide and finance healthcare."
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