ECU dean elected American Board of Family Medicine board chair
A dean of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University has been elected chair of the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) Board of Directors.
Dr. Elizabeth Baxley, senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of family medicine at the Brody School of Medicine, will lead the second-largest medical specialty board in the country for a one-year term.
The ABFM works to improve the health of the public by certifying family physicians; setting training standards; funding, conducting and publishing research; and collaborating with other specialty boards and organizations.
Dr. Elizabeth Baxley (contributed photo)
As chair, Baxley said she plans to emphasize the ABFM’s ongoing improvements in the process of continuous certification and work to optimize communication about these processes with family physicians and the public.
“Our challenge is to continue to evolve and innovate in a way that assures the public of the quality and competence that accompanies board certification, while at the same time reducing burden on front-line family physicians,” she said. “I love this work. It reminds me that at every level, medical education has a public trust to uphold. We need to take that commitment to our students, our residents and the patients they will serve very seriously.”
As senior associate dean for academic affairs at Brody, Baxley has oversight of critical areas of the school of medicine, including admissions, student affairs and academic support, medical student curriculum and evaluation, simulation programs, development of faculty, and diversity and inclusion efforts. Shortly after joining ECU in 2012, Baxley led efforts that resulted in a $1 million American Medical Association grant for the school to help accelerate change in medical education by incorporating training in patient safety, quality improvement, interprofessional care and population health into the medical student curriculum.
Prior to joining ECU, Baxley spent 18 years as a faculty member at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, where she served as chair of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. Additionally, she was a faculty member at AnMed Family Residency for five years after her training and subsequently was an associate professor of family medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. She received her Doctor of Medicine from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, completed a family medicine residency at AnMed Family Medicine in Anderson, South Carolina, and a faculty development fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Baxley earned her bachelor’s at Clemson University.
-by Angela Todd, University Communications