College of Medicine appoints pediatrics chairman

After serving in an interim capacity for nearly a year, Richard Bucciarelli, M.D., has been appointed chairman of the University of Florida College of Medicine's department of pediatrics and has been named the Nemours eminent scholar chair in pediatrics.

College of Medicine Dean Bruce Kone, M.D., said Bucciarelli is "the right person for the tasks at hand."

"Dr. Bucciarelli has done an outstanding job as interim chairman of the department for the past 10 months," Kone said. "He has earned the respect, admiration and praise of not only his faculty, but also faculty from across the College of Medicine, as well as leaders and providers in the Shands HealthCare system."

Bucciarelli, who has been a member of the UF faculty for more than 20 years, graduated from the University of Michigan School of Medicine in 1972. He completed his pediatric training at UF before leaving to serve as a member of the pediatric faculty at the University of Utah.

He returned to UF in 1982 as chief of neonatology.

"Without a doubt the atmosphere at the University of Florida has given me opportunities that I wouldn't have had anywhere else," Bucciarelli said.

Bucciarelli's affiliations and appointments are copious. He is past president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and currently serves as UF's associate vice president for health affairs for government relations.

Bucciarelli, a Robert Wood Johnson health policy fellow, also has served as a health policy legislative assistant and worked on drafting the Children's Commission Report under Sen. John D.

Rockefeller IV. This report was an attempt to take a comprehensive look at the needs of children and families. Bucciarelli wrote the chapter on family income security.

He remains involved in pediatric health policy research and has worked to examine both the Healthy Kids and KidCare programs in Florida. He was instrumental in creating the AAP MediKids proposal that was introduced in Congress in 2001 and 2003 and is an active part of the debate on Medicaid reform in Florida and in Washington, D.C.

"My real long-term goal is to improve access to health care for all children," he said.

Bucciarelli said he is honored by this appointment and has high hopes for the department of pediatrics at UF. "It is a great opportunity to be the chair," he said. "I'm quite honored that Dean Kone, (Shands HealthCare CEO) Tim Goldfarb and the pediatric faculty have confidence that I can lead the department through some challenging times, but I believe that we are and will continue to be the best pediatric program in the Southeast. We have the right resources and people here to achieve that long-term goal."