Arnold Kaluzny

1938 - 2025

Arnold D. Kaluzny was an early contributor to what is now known as Health Services Research; a multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation that studies how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, health technologies, provider and individual behaviors affect health outcomes and the quality and cost of health care. He died on October 29, 2025 at the age of 87.

Dr. Kaluzny was Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, a Senior Research Fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and an Investigator at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He was especially interested in the organizational factors affecting program implementation and change in a variety of healthcare organizations with specific emphasis on cancer treatment, prevention and control, and the role of continuous quality improvement initiatives in health care organizations. In all these endeavors a major focus was to strengthen the science base of health care policy and management practice.

Joining the faculty of the UNC School of Public Health in 1967 Dr. Kaluzny launched, and was the founding director of, the Doctoral (Ph.D) Program in Health Policy and Management, a research training program to advance understanding of the structure and processes of health services based on theoretical/disciplinary perspective to provide the empirical basis for policy and managerial decision-making. Over the years graduates of the program have assumed major academic and research positions both in the private and public sector and today is one of the premier health services research training programs in the country.

Dr. Kaluzny has served as a consultant to private research and health service organizations and various international, federal, and state agencies, including Project HOPE, the World Health Organization, USAID and various programs and institutes within the National Institutes of Health, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. From 1991 through 1995, he was a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at the National Cancer Institute and served as Chairman from 1993 to 1995.

Dr. Kaluzny co-authored or edited 10 books and more than 200 papers published in scholarly journals or as invited chapters in the area of health management quality, improvement, and research, dealing with the structure and operations of healthcare organizations. A central theme in all of these publications, as well as in his research and teaching, was influenced by Dr. Avedis Donabedien, his professor at the University of Michigan and longtime mentor, that health care, at its core, is a scientific and moral enterprise, not a commercial one.

Throughout his career his research, publications and teachings were recognized by the various Institutes and Centers within the National Institute of Health (NIH) and particularly the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He had served as an advisor to various NCI research initiatives, study sections and advisory committees, as well as contributing to the NCI research program, as an investigator, working with colleagues from the UNC School of Public Health, the UNC School of Medicine, the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Sheps Center for Health Services Research.

Upon retirement from UNC in 1998, Dr. Kaluzny was appointed as an advisor to the NCI Division of Cancer Prevention and the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, collaborating with NCI colleagues on new research initiatives, assessing the role of organizational and environmental factors affecting the quality, cost, and outcome of cancer care. In 2009 through 2014 he served as an advisor to the NCI National Community Cancer Center Program located in the Office of the NCI Director. The Program involved a public private partnership between the NCI and participating community hospitals designed to improve access to state-of-the-art cancer care in a community setting. In each of these capacities, Dr. Kaluzny was a strong advocate for the recognition of the role of the organizational structure and management processes to assure the effective translation of the evolving science to improve cancer care within a community setting.

These efforts were recognized by the NIH and NCI. In 2009 he was awarded the NIH Directors Award, for his contributions to the development and implementation of the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program, and in 2013, the NIH Award of Merit for his leadership and vision in the field of multilevel intervention research and cancer care.

Throughout his career, Dr. Kaluzny's research and teaching produced many invitations from international colleagues, resulting in lectures and assignments around the world, including various countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, as well as Australia, New Zealand and China. In 2005, he received a Senior Fulbright Specialist Award to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation/Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Beginning in 1990 and for ten years, he worked with Project HOPE and collaborated with Bill Pierskalla from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, to design and implement the healthcare management training program in central Europe for hospitals, managers, and physicians. The program was one of the pioneer executive training programs to meet the management needs of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia as they achieved independence from the Soviet Union. A similar training program was implemented in China in 2002-2003. Both served as models for future management training programs for healthcare executives within the international community.

Dr. Kaluzny received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, his Master's degree in Hospital Administration from the University of Michigan School of Business, and his Ph.D in Medical Care Organization - Social Psychology from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

He is survived by his two daughters Carrie Porter and Melissa Kaluzny- Williams and three grandchildren, Heather Porter, Crosby Williams and Nicolas Williams and his brother Richard Kaluzny. Barbara Kaluzny, his loving wife and partner for 56 years, died in 2016.

Dr. Kaluzny's passing occurred in a manner such as he lived his life – without fanfare, and as he would say "under deep cover", we will miss him dearly.

In accordance with his wishes memorial contributions can be made in the name of Barbara and Arnold Kaluzny to Triangle Disability & Autism Services, Inc., an affiliated chapter of the Arc - Triangledisability.org.