W. Reece Berryhill, M.D., (1900-1979) was the founding dean from 1941 to 1964 of the M.D.-granting medical school and today's medical school-hospitals complex at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This biography documents and personalizes the remarkable transformation in daily life, medical education, and health care in North Carolina during the twentieth century. Berryhill's life story is inseparable from the story of how the state mobilized its citizens and resources in the Good Health Movement of the 1940s and 1950s to address the deplorable health status of its citizens (its young men had the worst rejection rate for military service in World War II of any state).
While celebrating the contributions of Berryhill and many other public-spirited individuals dedicated to addressing North Carolinians' need for more doctors and more hospitals, this work is also an urgent challenge to address the still unmet need for more insurance—that is, universal access to needed health care for all citizens, regardless of ability to pay.