When Clyde B. Jensen, who holds a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology, became America’s youngest medical school president at the age of 32, the chairman of the state’s higher education system counseled him to use his extended executive career to experience as much of the healthcare and higher education continua as possible. During the next three decades, Dr. Jensen led educational institutions ranging from community colleges to research universities, and became the only person to lead colleges of allopathic, osteopathic, naturopathic, chiropractic and Oriental medicine.
Dr. Jensen coined the phrase “continuum clefts” to describe the costly and precarious gaps that fragment the healthcare continuum. As the owner of Continuum Biomedical Consultants, Inc., he now devotes much of his time to “mending the clefts.” In addition to his consulting, Dr. Jensen teaches pharmacology and other subjects related to interprofessional patient care at the University of Western States, Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and National University of Natural Medicine. He is also senior executive of the Oregon Collaborative for Integrative Medicine, America’s most comprehensive interprofessional health sciences education and research consortium.