Contact: Kay Fike Jones
A national health care organization is honoring the director of Mississippi State's student health center.
Dr. Robert K. Collins, head of the John C. Longest Student Health Center since 1988, is a newly named Fellow of the American College Health Association. A board-certified family practitioner, he joined the center as a staff physician in 1977.
Long active in the ACHA, he received its Ollie M. Moten service award in 1993 for his membership on numerous committees and his roles as chair and program director of the national organization's Athletic Medicine Section. He also has been the ACHA representative to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations.
In addition to the ACHA, Collins is an active member and former president of the Southern College Health Association.
Under Collins' leadership, the MSU student health center gained official approval for the first time of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Inc. and later was designated an association Model of Continuous Quality Improvement.
Collins is a graduate of the University of Mississippi Medical School, where he enrolled after completing bachelor's degrees in chemistry and biology at Millsaps College.
Collins' professional training and interests include sports medicine, AIDS education, office orthopedics, and computers and medicine.
Headquartered in Linthicum, Md., the American College Health Association was established in 1920 "to provide an organization in which institutions of higher education, other organizations and interested individuals may work together to promote health in the broadest aspects for students and all members of the college community."