Amy Blue named to UF Health education leadership positions
Dr. Amy Blue
Amy V. Blue, Ph.D., has been named associate dean for educational affairs at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and associate vice president for interprofessional education in the UF Health Office of the Senior Vice President for Health Affairs. She divides her time evenly between the two positions.
“Dr. Blue brings a wealth of experience in interdisciplinary health education to UF Health and she shares our organization’s commitment to training students in the six Health Science Center colleges to provide collaborative care that is high-quality, safe and patient-centered,” said David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for health affairs and president of UF Health.
Blue previously served as a professor of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina and as MUSC’s assistant provost for education.
Blue has co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and has conducted a variety of studies evaluating different types of educational initiatives. Most recently, she completed a research project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and conducted in collaboration with colleagues from the American Board of Internal Medicine, that examined assessment and evaluation approaches in interprofessional education. Blue served as a member of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel that wrote the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Report in 2011.
In her role as the College of Public Health and Health Professions’ associate dean for educational affairs, Blue oversees the college’s interdisciplinary degree programs, including the bachelor’s in health science, public health master’s and doctoral degrees, and the rehabilitation science doctorate.
As associate vice president for interprofessional education, Blue directs the UF Health Office of Interprofessional Education, which has developed cross-college learning opportunities for the academic health center since 1999.
Interprofessional health education programs are imperative for improving patient outcomes and patient safety, Blue said.
“When you listen to a mother who lost her teenage son due to miscommunication and lapses in teamwork amongst different health professionals, the numbers quoted from the 1999 Institute of Medicine about the number of preventable medical errors every year — some 98,0000 — are no longer abstract,” she said. “These are our loved ones, and sometimes ourselves, who suffer.”