James W. Mold MD

After graduating from the University of Michigan and Duke University School of Medicine I completed a residency in Family Medicine at the University of Rochester/Highland Hospital in Rochester, New York. I practiced medicine in Ghana, West Africa, then in a small town in North Carolina, before joining the faculty at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in 1984. While there I completed a part-time fellowship in Geriatric Medicine and a Master of Public Health degree. From 1994 to 2014 I was involved in research within a practice-based network that I organized called OKPRN (www.okprn.org), which ultimately led to efforts at the state and national levels to establish an extension system to support ongoing improvements in primary health care and collaborations between primary care and public and mental health. In 2008 I was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), an organization that assists government agencies and the private sector in making decisions to improve health care services.

I am now retired and live in Chapel Hill, N.C. with my wife, Sandy, and our golden retriever, Lily. My daughter and grandchildren live close by. I continue to serve as a consultant to researchers at the University of Oklahoma, the University of North Carolina, and Duke. Though I have written many journal articles and book chapters, Achieving Your Personal Health Goals: A Patient’s Guide is my first complete book. It is an attempt to help patients clarify, advocate for, and choose strategies to achieve their health goals and to encourage their health care providers to focus on their goals, not just their identified medical problems. The concept of goal-directed health care has been a passion of mine for more than 25 years. I am convinced that it is a more rational and humane way to view health and health care.