Finalists for health sciences VP named
UNM plans online forums for all four
The longtime president of a major anti-tobacco organization is in the running to be the University of New Mexico’s top doctor, as are leaders at two University of California medical institutions.
Drs. Elena Fuentes-Afflick, Douglas Ziedonis and Cheryl Healton, along with Dr. Veronica
Mallett, are the four finalists to be the university’s executive vice president for the UNM Health Sciences Center.
The person chosen will take over one of the most influential medical positions in New Mexico during a pandemic and will be one of the highest-paid public employees in the state. He or she will oversee 11,000 employees, 2,200 students and a $2.2 billion budget that includes the largest health care system in New Mexico, a medical school and $190 million in annual research grants, according to UNM’s “leadership profile” for the position.
After identifying only one of four finalists late last week, UNM has now named all the candidates to replace Dr. Paul Roth, who is retiring at the end of the month as the top executive at the Health Sciences Center after a long career at UNM.
Each candidate has a short biography and résumé posted on UNM’s website. Regent policy says that before hiring key administrators, including executive vice presidents, the school must complete a nationwide search and put together a search committee before bringing finalists to campus for public forums and other meetings.
Due to the pandemic, the candidates will instead take part in Zoom conferences with different UNM representatives beginning Thursday with Mallett. There will be separate forums for students, faculty, staff, HSC clinicians, and HSC residents and fellows.
Fuentes-Afflick, vice dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, is also a professor and vice chair of Pediatrics, and the Chief of Pediatrics at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
Her areas of research include Latina health care, and how ethnicity and immigration status affect care and outcomes, according to her biography. She will take part in forums early next week.
Healton, who will engage with the campus community Thursday and Friday of next week, has been the dean of the School of Global Public Health at NYU since 2012. For 14 years before that, she was president and CEO of the American Legacy Foundation, a major anti-tobacco organization created as part of a settlement between state attorneys general and the tobacco industry.
She earned a Doctor of Public Health from Columbia University.
Ziedonis, who will speak with
university groups July 27-29, is associate vice chancellor for health sciences at the University of California San Diego. He has held senior hospital leadership positions for the past 13 years at UCSD and University of Massachusetts. His background is in psychiatry, and he has been a faculty member at Yale, Rutgers and UMASS.
Last week, UNM posted information about the candidate who is first up in the remote town halls.
Mallett, a senior vice president for health affairs and dean at Meharry Medical College School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, is scheduled to speak with the campus groups Thursday. Before working at Meharry, Mallett held several leadership positions at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso from 2011 to 2015, according to her résumé.
Her residency was in obstetrics and gynecology.