| Emory Report | June 23, 1997 |
Volume 49, No. 34 |
David Blake, senior vice president for Biomedical Research for the Association for the American Medical Colleges (AAMC), has been named to a newly created senior level position at Emory, according to President Bill Chace. "The establishment of this new position is in response to the Woodruff Health Sciences Center's efforts to become one of the nation's leading academic health sciences centers for teaching, research and patient care," said Chace.
Effective September 1, Blake becomes associate director of the Health Sciences Center and vice president for academic health affairs. He will assist Michael Johns, executive vice president for health affairs, in planning, directing, managing, operating and advancing all components of the academic and research missions of the Health Sciences Center.
Blake will be responsible for coordinating the large plans now being made in the Center's three schools and the Yerkes Primate Center and making certain the goals of each division reinforce and are reinforced by the overall Center's vision and strengths. He will exercise this same coordination role working between the Woodruff Health Sciences Center and the University and between the Woodruff Center and external institutions such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the American Cancer Society, and others. He will be a vital part of the implementation of the research plan and help establish academic priorities to support the strategic planning efforts for Emory Healthcare.
"David Blake is uniquely suited to these roles," said Johns. "His experience and insights have been invaluable to us during the past year while he served as a consultant to the centerwide research strategic planning now underway at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center."
The two men worked together closely during Johns tenure as dean at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where Blake was senior associate dean and acting associate dean for research until 1993, when he was named executive vice dean and vice dean for research. He joined the AAMC in 1996 when Johns left Hopkins to come to Emory.
"He knows how to get things done," said Johns of Blake. "He understands science and the business of science from a number of perspectives. . . . Equally important, he has the gift of collaboration and teamwork, and I know he will be able to take advantage, as I have, of the tremendous expertise and leadership in place in the Health Sciences Center and University."
A native of Baltimore, Blake attended the University of Maryland, where he received his BS degree in pharmac, with honors in 1963 and a PhD in pharmacology in 1966. He was a research associate in pharmacology-toxicology at the National Heart Institute before returning to the University of Maryland as an assistant professor of pharmacology. While still in his 20s, he was named chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland and a research associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology.
He first joined Hopkins faculty in 1973 as an assistant professor in the Departments of Gynecology and Obstetrics and Pharmacology.
"From my experience at Johns Hopkins and the AAMC, it is apparent to me that Emory is the best positioned institution in the U.S. to develop a new-and sorely needed-model for academic health centers in the emerging managed health care environment," said Blake.
-Sylvia Wrobel