Gift by Duke professor emeritus brings career in community health full circle
A career dedicated to improving health in partnership with communities has culminated in a transformational gift by Duke University School of Medicine Professor Emeritus J. Lloyd Michener, MD, to carry forward work that he and his wife championed for years.
Michener and his late wife, Gwendolyn C. Murphy, PhD, devoted their careers to supporting partnerships that bring research, care, and community voices together to solve problems and improve health. Michener served as chair of the Department of Family Medicine & Community Health for 22 years, and Murphy worked for the School of Medicine as a registered dietitian and education consultant.
Murphy passed away Feb. 27, shortly after their 50th wedding anniversary.
“It's been a long and glorious journey,” Michener said. “This is work we shared and care deeply about, and this gift was her vision too. This is the start of a new chapter.”
The gift establishes the Michener Family Community Health Fund to support activities and programs that coordinate academic, research, and clinical efforts between Duke Health and the Durham community, strengthen trust and deepen partnerships, and achieve measurable patient outcomes.
“This meaningful gift demonstrates Lloyd and Gwen’s lifelong commitment to advancing health through community-led collaborations,” said Mary E. Klotman, MD, executive vice president for health affairs at Duke University and dean of the School of Medicine. “The School of Medicine is truly fortunate to have generous emeriti faculty like Lloyd, whose support strengthens our missions and fosters exceptional care for every patient we serve.”
A pioneer who helped transform community engagement from a peripheral concept into an evidence-based pillar of health research, Michener was lead editor on “The Principles of Community Engagement,” a foundational, science-based guide with more than 10 million downloads. He has consulted on primary care redesign in more than 20 countries and founded the Duke Center for Community Research.
As a leader in the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program — a consortium of academic health centers working to move discovery into real-world care — Michener helped define community engagement as essential to improving health. At Duke, that national framework is put into action through the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), which builds trust with community partners, expands access to studies, and ensures research is responsive to the needs of the people it serves.
Michener’s gift brings full circle his work shaping the national CTSA movement. Duke’s CTSI will implement the new Community Health Fund, which Michener is jump-starting with an initial outright investment and sustaining with a planned gift.
“This gift from the Michener family ensures that Duke can be a reliable and trustworthy partner with our community,” said Susanna Naggie, MD, director of the CTSI. “The fund provides the unique opportunity to build the infrastructure, relationships, and coordination necessary for effective and lasting community-engaged work.”
Michener has spent his career closing gaps between researchers and communities. The fund will advance and accelerate that effort, he said.
“It’s really about creating an enduring structure for trusted partnerships between Duke and Durham, and more broadly, supporting projects that improve health in ways the community desires,” he said.
The fund was inspired by his wife and will be part of her legacy, Michener said.
“She was an educator, a dietitian, and had expertise in informatics, but her heart was in listening to kids and community groups and trying to figure out how to make things work,” he said.
In 2001, Murphy helped launch the Tooth Ferry, a fully equipped mobile dental unit that rotates among Durham schools to address a leading cause of student absences — tooth pain and untreated cavities. The Tooth Ferry remained one of Murphy’s favorite projects, and the clinic van still rolls today thanks to the partnership she helped forge between Duke, Durham County, and Durham Public Schools.
Michener and Murphy met at Oberlin College, married in a Quaker ceremony in 1976, and eventually moved to Durham, where he completed a residency and fellowship at the School of Medicine and she worked at Duke Hospital specializing in pediatric nutrition. Their careers, like their marriage, were guided by a shared calling to help others and push institutions to become trustworthy community partners.
“You really can improve health, but it’s not by figuring out what people should do and telling them to do it,” Michener said. “It’s by listening to their concerns and their interests, then figuring out together how to build on their strengths. And one of the places that has a history of doing this is Duke.”
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