One of George Parkerson’s famous creeds is that he doesn’t believe in retirement. However, after working full-time at Duke University School of Medicine for 45 years, he has now transitioned to professor emeritus.
Parkerson served as chair of the Department of Family Medicine & Community Health from 1985 to 1994. As chair he was instrumental in obtaining Duke University Hospital admission privileges for family doctors and moving the Duke Family Medicine Center from Durham Regional Hospital (now Duke Regional) to the Duke campus. After stepping down as chair, he served on the Duke IRB for Clinical Investigations from 1995 to 2015.
In recent years, Parkerson returned to the department to conduct population health research, partnering with Lincoln Community Health Center’s Chief Medical Officer Howard Eisenson. The partnership received a Population Health Improvement Award from the Duke CTSI Community Engagement Core in 2017 to test two population health tools at Lincoln. Their research team at Lincoln also developed the Duke Population Health Profile (Duke-PH), a self-report measure of population health based on social determinants and illness determinants.