James C. Strickler
02.11.2022
James C. Strickler, MD, Professor of Medicine and Community and Family Medicine Emeritus, graduated from Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School, and the Cornell Medical College. He trained in internal medicine and physiology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in NYC. From 1954-1956 he served as the independent medical officer aboard the USS Kenneth Whiting in the western Pacific. In 1958-59 he was the Chief Medical Resident at the New York Hospital. From 1959-62 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology and from 1962-67 served as Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Cornell Medical College. In 1967 he moved to Dartmouth as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs to plan, along with Dean Carlton Chapman, the transition from a two-year, basic medical science program to a full MD curriculum. He served as Dean of the Dartmouth Medical School from 1973-81 and sponsored the development of the Brown-Dartmouth MD Program. Following his deanship, he qualified in geriatrics and as a member of the faculty of the Dartmouth Medical School, specialized in the care of the elderly until 1996, when he retired from clinical practice. After working with Cambodian refugees in Thailand in 1982, Dr. Strickler joined the Board of the International Rescue Committee. Along with Ambassador Winston Lord, he co-chaired the IRC Board from 1999-2004 and is now Chairman Emeritus and an Overseer of the IRC. As a member of the IRC Board he made over 35 trips to visit refugee programs in Asia, Africa, the Balkans, Central America and the Mid-East. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council and is a former Chairman of the Board of the National Council for International Health. Dr. Strickler continues to teach international health at the Dartmouth Medical School and since 2000 has coordinated the School’s extensive activities in Kosovo, which have included a continuous, bilateral, student exchange program with the School of Medicine at the University of Prishtina and three, sequential, USAID funded health programs to improve primary, antenatal and perinatal care throughout this former province of Yugoslavia. Dr. Strickler recently founded the Kosovo based Foundation for Healthy Mothers and Babies and was a charter member of the Board of Trustees. This foundation, now dissolved, has evolved into the nonprofit organization Action for Mothers and Children, and Dr. Strickler is the Honorary Chairman. His 14-year interests in Kosovo recently facilitated a new academic liaison between Dartmouth and the American University in Kosovo. In 2012 Kosovo President Jahjaga presented Dr. Strickler the Mother Teresa Medal and in 2013 the Albanian American Medical Society honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his humanitarian work in Kosovo.
