UA CCHS Professor Named Associate Dean for Research and Member of Statewide Emergency Response Commission

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. John C. Higginbotham, associate professor and interim chairman of the department of community and rural medicine in the College of Community Health Sciences, has been named associate dean for research and health policy for The University of Alabama School of Medicine, Tuscaloosa.

Higginbotham also serves as director of UA’s Institute for Rural Health Research.

In the newly created position, Higginbotham will be responsible for facilitating research and other activities that inform public health policy, particularly as it relates to the focus of the School of Medicine/College of Community Health Sciences – the health of rural Alabama.

He will work closely with the College’s dean in providing strategic planning and will collaborate with administrators and faculty and UA’s research administration to implement the College’s mission. In addition, Higginbotham will partner with, and provide assistance to, state and national policy makers, decision makers and funding agencies.

“Dr. Higginbotham is an outstanding researcher and administrator,” said Dr. Eugene Marsh, interim CCHS dean. “Through his leadership, we are creating a new research infrastructure within the College of Community Health Sciences that will position us for continued growth and expansion during the next few years.”

Higginbotham also has been named to the statewide Emergency Response Commission to the Health Care Crisis in Alabama. The commission was formed earlier this year by the state Senate in an attempt to reign in health care costs and improve Alabama residents’ access to care.

Higginbotham has been at UA since June of 1999. Prior to that, Higginbotham was a faculty member in the department of preventive medicine at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

He continues to hold an adjunct faculty appointment in the UTMB Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, as well as adjunct appointments in UA’s Capstone College of Nursing and UAB’s Center for Health Promotion.

He teaches epidemiology, statistics, evaluation, and research design to both medical and non-medical graduate students. His most recent presentations and publications have focused on racial and ethnic disparities in rates of cancer and other health issues that have particular impact in rural areas.

Higginbotham is also Principal Investigator of UA’s portion of a $7.5 million Project EXPORT grant titled “Reducing Health Disparities in Alabama’s Black Belt.”

The College of Community Health Sciences is a clinical branch campus of The University of Alabama School of Medicine, which is based in Birmingham. CCHS emphasizes rural health, family practice and other primary care disciplines, and provides education for third- and fourth-year medical students. CCHS also trains family practice physicians through a three-year Family Practice Residency Program, which provides medical service to the community through UA’s University Medical Center and Tuscaloosa’s DCH Regional Medical Center.