Chicago, IL, February 4, 2019 – The American Board of Preventive Medicine (ABPM) announced today that it has elected two new members to its Board of Directors and appointed a new Chair of the ABPM’s Sub-board for Clinical Informatics. From a field of well-qualified candidates, the Board elected the following individuals.

David W. Niebuhr, MD, MPH, MSc, FACPM, FAAFP has been elected to the Public Health and General Preventive Medicine Director position. Dr. Niebuhr is currently the Medical Officer for the Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and serves as Professor of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. (Note: Dr. Niebuhr is serving in his personal capacity.)

As Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics faculty, Dr. Niebuhr is committed to supporting new physicians throughout their career and will bring that commitment to his work on the Board. “I believe educating and training the next generation of preventive medicine residents is critical to the future of our specialty…My service as a Director of ABPM will be dedicated to ensuring that initial board certification and maintenance of certification remains relevant to the evolving scientific-base to the specialty and the needs of the population we serve.”

Michael Weaver, MD, DFASAM, was elected to the newly-established Sub-board Director position which is responsible for representing the collective interests of the ABPM’s Subspecialties. Dr. Weaver is currently the Medical Director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Research on Addiction and Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGovern Medical School, both at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He is also on the medical staff at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and the Harris County Psychiatric Center in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Weaver has experience working with a wide array of organizations, providing him with the ability to contribute to the varied work of the Board. In addition to serving as the Sub-board Chair for Addiction Medicine for ABPM, he has worked with the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the Addiction Medicine Foundation, the National Board of Medical Examiners and the American Board of Medical Specialties, “As a director,” Dr. Weaver said, “I would be a voice for all subspecialties to the Board, and I would strive to represent the concerns and values of the different subspecialties, not just my own.”

Adi Gundlapalli, MD, Ph.D., MS, has been elected to the position of ABPM Sub-board Chair for Clinical Informatics. Dr. Gundlapalli is currently a tenured Professor of Internal Medicine, an Associate Professor with Tenure in Biomedical Informatics, and Adjunct Faculty in Pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is also the Chief of the Medical Informatics Services and the Chief Health Informatics Officer at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System.

Dr. Gundlapalli previously served as Clinical Informatics Sub-board Vice Chair and most recently served as the Interim Sub-board Chair for ABPM. With his experience in Clinical Informatics education, involvement as a founding member with the Clinical Informatics sub-board and participation in the continuing development of the Clinical Informatics examination, Dr. Gundlapalli has the experience and knowledge to guide the subspecialty into its future. Expected changes “will make for a busy few years and will require institutional knowledge and memory of the CI sub-board and its functioning,” he says. “I have the interest and dedication to help steer the CI sub-board over the next few years through these changes and beyond.”

The terms for Drs, Niebuhr, Weaver and Gundlapalli will commence at the conclusion of the ABPM’s Interim Board Meeting in August 2019.

The Directors of the ABPM welcome these new members and are excited to work with them on ABPM’s mission to promote the health and safety of the American people through high standards in certification and maintenance of certification in the profession of preventive medicine.

The ABPM is a Member Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). Founded in 1948, ABPM works with the ABMS in the development of standards for the ongoing assessment and certification of over 12,000 physicians certified by the ABPM in the specialties of Aerospace Medicine, Occupational Medicine, and Public Health and General Preventive Medicine; and in the subspecialties of Addiction Medicine, Clinical Informatics, Medical Toxicology and Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine.