Howard W. Houser, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the UAB Department of Health Services Administration and former associate dean in the School of Health Professions, was elected and inducted to the Alabama Healthcare Hall of Fame in 2020, however, the awards ceremony was delayed due to COVID. At a ceremony in Montgomery on August 13, 2022, Houser officially received his Alabama Healthcare Hall of Fame plaque and was honored in person by the organization and its board.

Houser’s career at UAB spanned 45 years from 1965 until his retirement in 2010. As a young administrator, he was known for his work to desegregate University Hospital in Birmingham. Academically, he, his faculty colleagues and Mathew F. McNulty Jr. developed a curriculum that has educated nearly 2,000 master’s and 150 Ph.D. students. These students have essentially been leaders in health care for the past 55+ years. Houser was also instrumental in laying the foundation for UAB’s M.S. in Health Administration (MSHA) program which is now ranked #1 in the nation in the most recent rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

Internationally, Houser helped create a three-year master’s program to educate Chinese students in health administration – the Sino-American Joint Program. The first class graduated from that program in 1989. Most recently Houser has helped design the curriculum and taught, from 2012 to 2016 graduate students in hospital management at Tsinghua University, one of the elite academic institutions in China. Between 2015 and 2019, he would bring part of that class to UAB’s campus each summer for three weeks of intensive study. In addition to hosting visiting students, scholars, and medical delegations, Houser also helped establish a state-of-the-art pediatric hospital in China.