Trevisan to Head University of Nevada Health Sciences System

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Maurizio Trevisan, founding dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo, has been named vice chancellor and chief executive officer of the University of Nevada Health Sciences System, the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE).

He will leave UB in October to assume leadership of Nevada's health sciences system, which includes 200 programs spread throughout the eight institutions within the NSHE, including schools of medicine, dental medicine, public health, allied health, health and human sciences, and nursing.

In his new role, Trevisan will be responsible for establishing the vision and providing the leadership to develop the strategy that will achieve the growth and quality objectives of the University of Nevada Health Sciences System. He also will be responsible for developing an efficient academic university system that improves health-care delivery and access to care; and promoting the development of multi-professional health and wellness research.

David L. Dunn, UB vice president for health sciences, said a national search for a new dean of UB's School of Public Health and Health Professions will begin immediately. An interim dean will be named shortly.

"Maurizio is an accomplished and prolific scholar whose endeavors within the field of preventive medicine and public health have been broad-ranging," Dunn said. "He is highly sought after as a speaker, participant in academic meetings and as a research collaborator and contributor."

Dunn noted that Trevisan has been the principal investigator or a co-investigator on a large number of both multi-center and single-center grants, and his research has produced more than 235 publications in extremely high-impact journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The potential for both scientific and social impact of these studies clearly is enormous, and Maurizio broke new ground in many different areas by analyzing the nature of human disease and affliction among entire populations, as well as considering the optimal means of prevention," he said.

Satish K. Tripathi, UB provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, noted that "in 2004 when Dr. Trevisan was named the dean of the newly established School of Public Health and Health Professions, we fully understood his depth and impact as a physician scholar.  We also had a keen sense of his true potential as an administrator.

"Over the past three years as dean, Maurizio has been recognized across our university and throughout our country's higher education academic health centers as a visionary leader who exemplifies sincerity of purpose and strength of will, and as a builder of consensus who successfully forged a groundbreaking path toward realizing the vision of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions.

"We will very much miss Maurizio's leadership and friendship and wish him much continued success in his vice chancellor role in the Nevada system."

UB President John B. Simpson called Trevisan "the consummate scholar-practitioner, equally gifted as a researcher, educator, physician and administrator.

"As the founding dean of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions, he brought that wide-ranging perspective to bear in shaping the school into one of the most groundbreaking institutions of its kind, building a prevention-focused program whose proactive vision of health and wellness has had a far-reaching impact on the health-care community locally, as well as globally," Simpson said. 

"His own pioneering research in epidemiology epitomized the scope of that impact, expanding the boundaries of knowledge in areas ranging from cardiology and diabetes to dental disease and women's health. While we will miss his contributions greatly, he has left the School of Public Health and Health Professions very well poised for continued growth and achievement. We wish him every success in his new leadership role in Nevada."

A UB faculty member since 1985, Trevisan was named dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions in December 2004. He had served since September 2001 as interim dean of the former School of Health Related Professions, which was merged with the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, then part of UB's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, to form the School of Public Health and Health Professions in 2003. Trevisan was named interim dean of the new school and was integral in establishing the school and shaping its vision and scholarly direction.

Under his direction as dean, the school has undergone and continues to experience considerable academic growth through both faculty recruitment and development, and the creation of new programs and areas of research.

An internationally renowned epidemiologist in the field of cardiovascular disease risk factors, Trevisan holds an appointment as a professor of social and preventive medicine, and had served as chair of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine when it was in the UB medical school from 1993-2003.

He also holds appointments as professor in the UB Department of Family Medicine, adjunct professor with UB's Nutrition Program and senior associate research scientist with the Research Institute on Addictions. He is co-principal investigator with UB's Clinical Vanguard Center of the Women's Health Initiative and director of Health in Housing, a World Health Organization Collaborating Center located in the UB medical school.

Trevisan served as chair of the search committee that in 2006 oversaw the selection of Michael E. Cain as dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

He earned his medical degree from the University of Naples Medical School in Naples, Italy, and a master's degree in epidemiology from UB. Before joining UB, Trevisan was a consultant with the Institute of Internal Medicine and Metabolic Disease at the University of Naples and a research fellow at Northwestern University.

In 2002, Trevisan received the SUNY Chancellor's Research Recognition Award in recognition of his research accomplishments. Three years earlier he received the UB medical school's Stockton Kimball Award, honoring a faculty member for academic accomplishment and worldwide recognition as an investigator and researcher.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State University of New York. The School of Public Health and Health Professions and School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences are two of five schools that constitute UB's Academic Health Center. UB's more than 27,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.