March 2, 2021
Dr. Jane Weida, professor of family medicine at The University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences and an associate director of the UA Tuscaloosa Family Medicine Residency, was named chair of the College’s Department of Family, Internal, and Rural Medicine.
Weida, also a practicing family medicine physician at University Medical Center, has served as interim chair of the department for the past several years. The College operates the residency and UMC.
“Through her leadership and dedication, the Department of Family, Internal, and Rural Medicine has thrived and grown,” Dr. Richard Friend, dean of CCHS, said in announcing Weida’s appointment. “We have accomplished much under her guidance as interim chair and will achieve much more as she steps into the permanent role.”
As an associate residency director, Weida helped lead the well-established three-year program for physicians seeking to specialize in the practice of family medicine. The residency is one of the oldest and largest family medicine residencies in the United States, annually educating and training 48 resident physicians – and it also offers seven fellowship programs for family medicine physicians who want additional specialized training. To date, 524 residents have graduated from the residency; 1 in 7 family medicine physicians practicing in Alabama are graduates of the program and many others have entered practice in the Southeast and other parts of the U.S., including in rural and medically underserved areas.
Weida has also overseen the College’s rural programs, which fulfill an important part of the CCHS mission.
She leads efforts to transform how patient care is delivered at UMC, the College’s medical practice. She led the team to transform UMC in Tuscaloosa and UMC-Northport, both now recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance as Patient-Centered Medical Homes. The PCMH model delivers patient-centered and comprehensive care that is proactive in providing preventive, wellness and chronic illness care, and that is evidence-based and data-driven. At the time of its initial recognition as a PCMH in 2017, UMC ranked in the top 100 of the 23,000 medical practices nationwide working toward practice transformation, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
In addition, Weida developed and leads the College’s Global Health Curriculum, a two-year track of studies for second- and third-year residents of the Tuscaloosa Family Medicine Residency. She has traveled extensively to provide family medicine education and care in Haiti and many former Soviet Republics in Asia and Europe.
Weida has research and academic interests in residency education, medical student interest in family medicine and global health. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, authored book chapters and has made numerous presentations regionally, nationally and internationally. She is active in professional organizations, serving as past president of the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, where she developed the organization’s signature humanitarian program in Haiti. She serves on the Board of Censors of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, the Alabama Department of Health’s State Committee, and the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners. She also served on the Office of Women’s Heath and Steering Committee for the Alabama Department of Public Health, and she is included in the Best Doctors in America database, an online health-care resource that allows members to get medical questions answered by experts from around the country.
Weida received her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and completed her family medicine residency at Chestnut Hill Hospital, both in Philadelphia. After 13 years in private practice in Blue Bell, Pa., she spent six years as faculty at Penn State College of Medicine before joining an affiliated community-based family medicine residency in West Reading, Pa. There, she taught residents and medical students, and served as the medical director, clerkship director and co-director of the residency’s Global Health Track.
