Erica Frank
Biography
Erica Frank, MD, MPH, is a Tier I Canada Research Chair, a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health and in the Department of Family Practice in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and a Senior Scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. She is also Founding Director of NextGenU.org (creating a virtual health sciences university), Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Research Director for the Annenberg Physician Training Program in Addiction Medicine. Until 2006, she was a tenured Professor, Vice Chair (Academic Affairs), and Division Director (Preventive Medicine) in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. She also directed Emory’s Preventive Medicine Residency Program, and had a clinical practice in cholesterol management. Following a transitional internship at the Cleveland Clinic, she was residency (Yale, 1990) and fellowship (Stanford, 1993) trained, and also board certified, in preventive medicine. Her major research theme is physicians’ personal and clinical prevention habits. She is Principal Investigator of three national studies: (1) the Women Physicians’ Health Study, a questionnaire-based study of 4,501 U.S. women M.D.s, and the first large study of their personal and professional characteristics, yielding more than fifty publications; (2) the “Healthy Doc – Healthy Patient†project, a 17 U.S. medical school study showing the positive effect of encouraging medical students’ healthy behaviors on their personal and clinical prevention habits; and (3) of a similar study to WPHS, the Canadian Physicians’ Health Study. She has traveled and worked in over 60 countries, and is extensively published with over 120 articles (including four first-authored JAMA publications, and additional first-authored articles in the Lancet, BMJ, and other major medical journals). Dr. Frank is the Founder of NextGenU.org, the world’s first portal to free, accredited, higher education. Starting with a focus in the health sciences, NextGenU.org partners with leading universities, professional societies, and government organizations including the U.S. CDC, World Bank, and the World Health Organization. All NextGenU courses are competency-based, and include a web-based global peer community of practice, and local, skills-based mentorships. NextGenU.org’s accredited partners give learners credit for this training (or institutions can adopt them and use them with their students), all (for the first time ever) for free, and without advertisements. Founded in 2001, NextGenU launched its first full course (Emergency Medicine) in March 2012; initial data show that NextGenU’s training performs comparably to that of traditional American schooling of physicians and other health workers. Dr. Frank has considerable media and health education experience. She has been the Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Preventive Medicine (1994-1999), the Editor of the student component of JAMA, and has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. She has written for Vogue magazine, and was the health reporter for the central Georgia ABC affiliate, a medical editor for Lifetime Medical Television, and a health reporter for Medical News Network. Dr. Frank is also an active volunteer and environmentalist, including being Immediate Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and one of four elected co-mayors/councilors of her town. She has received a number of awards for her work, including the AMA/Pettis Award (outstanding U.S. medical student communicator), the American College of Preventive Medicine’s (ACPM’s) “Rising Star Award†(received the first year the award was offered), ACPM’s Best Scientific Presentation and Distinguished Service awards, AOA status, and the outstanding alumnus award from both Princeton Day School and Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.EDUCAUSE Presentations
Memberships
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