May 2001 • Volume 7 • Number 5
Jobe to be dean at Mercer University medical school
Family physician Ann Jobe, M.D., M.S.N., plans to continue her family practice activism as a new dean. She takes that post July 1 at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga.
Family practice, this March, had its fourth straight decrease in medical students matching into the specialty's residencies. "To be a family medicine dean within the Association of American Medical Colleges, to me this brings the challenge of telling the others in the AAMC Council of Deans that this erosion of interest in primary care by medical students is something we all have to solve," says Jobe.
The AAMC has predominantly focused on funding for research through the National Institutes of Health, says Jobe. NIH funding, mainly for subspecialist research, is $20.36 billion for 2001, and the Bush administration proposes $23.11 billion for NIH in 2002, a 13 percent increase.
Jobe compares the AAMC's success in promoting the NIH with the importance of fostering primary care. "I need to make the AAMC aware it should rethink how it can support primary care, including family medicine, and do the same thing to enhance that across the nation," says Jobe.
"The AAMC is advocating meeting the needs of the underserved, covering the care of all people, improving their care. They (the AAMC) cannot do that with just an NIH budget," she says. "They've got to do it in partnership with primary care, with family physicians." Jobe has been assistant vice chancellor during the last three years for the medical school at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.
Jobe, 55, began participating in the Academy and the AAMC as a medical student. She led AAFP's congress of residents and served on two committees. She was a student representative within AAMC and chairs its MedCAREERS Advisory Committee, working to improve counseling programs and online information on career options. Jobe expects to be one of only five or six women among some 125 deans on the AAMC Council of Deans.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2001 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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