August 2012
We are pleased to announce that on July 11, 2012 we opened the doors to the UF&Shands Florida Recovery Center (FRC) new campus. The campus will be home to our programs for impaired health professionals and others recovering from addictive diseases. The campus, formerly the Marriot Residence Inn, an all-suite hotel on 441 in southwest Gainesville, is within walking distance to the University of Florida academic health center and Shands at the University of Florida. Extensive renovations to all of the suites and common areas are the most visible evidence of a new home for FRC. Scott Teitelbaum, M.D., Daniel Logan, M.D., Bill Greene, M.D. and Michael Herkov, Ph.D., will continue to evaluate patients from nearly 40 states through FRC’s treatment programs. The new campus will house patients participating in the FRC partial hospitalization program, and eventually the UF&Shands Eating Disorder Recovery Center partial hospitalization program led by Kevin Wandler, M.D. and Elizabeth Dizney, Psy.D.
The Physicians Health Research Group led by Lisa Merlo Greene, Ph.D. Dr. Merlo and her group have made numerous contributions to the literature on physician drug and alcohol abuse and addictions, iatrogenic addiction and diversion, treatment and recovery . They have many high-impact journal reports and are considered among the national leaders in this area of research. Education, exercise, diet, family intervention, treatment, counseling and learning to live drug and alcohol-free and other outcomes tracked by FRC researchers will be closely monitored in all patients for five years after discharge.
Basic and translational drug, food and alcohol research partially funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse continues at the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida.
We are excited to be moving to the new campus and delighted to have more than 20 full-time UF addiction faculty members working to evaluate and treat patients and research prevention, education and treatment development. We’ve come a long way from our 1990 beginning of the UF addiction medicine program. Thanks to former chairs of the UF Department of Psychiatry Dwight Evans and Wayne Goodman for supporting the missions and facilitating research and clinical program growth. Of course, thanks to Dean Michael Good, M.D., Vice President David Guzick, M.D., Ph.D and Shands HealthCare Chief Executive Officer Tim Goldfarb, who have made the dreams of Dr. Teitelbaum and his group a reality.
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Sincerely,
Mark S. Gold, M.D.
Chair, UF College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry