Dr. Marcia Katz, a nationally recognized clinical leader at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Medical Center, is joining the College of Medicine as Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs.

“Dr. Katz is a passionate, patient-centered leader,” said Dr. Deborah German, vice president for medical affairs and dean. “I am thrilled she has been selected after a nation-wide search for an individual who will work closely with our hospital partners in developing educational, research and patient care initiatives.”

A practicing pulmonary and clinical care physician and full professor, Dr. Katz is Baylor’s Associate Chair of Medicine for Clinical Affairs, Medical Director of the Department of Medicine for the Faculty Group Practice, and Chief of Adult Medicine at Texas Children’s Hospital./The Pavilion for Women. The Department of Medicine has 657 full-time faculty and a budget of more than $75 million. In her role as Associate Chair, she led the clinical mission of practice sites and affiliated institutions with a renewed focus on patient-centered care with the highest quality and safety. As head of adult medicine at TCH, she planned and helped build the Pavilion for Women, a new state-of-the-art 110-bed OB-GYN hospital that opened in 2012. She also helped lead the development of Baylor’s Lung Institute, a collaboration between thoracic surgery and pulmonary medicine.

She is medical director of the medical school’s Adult Cystic Fibrosis Center, one of the largest accredited CF centers in the nation. She also served as Co-PI of the Cystic Fibrosis Therapeutic Development Center, the facility’s clinical research arm. A former ELAM (Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program for Women) fellow at Drexel University College of Medicine, she holds a graduate certificate in healthcare management from Rice University. She was also honored in 2012 with the Ben and Margaret Love Foundation Bobby R. Alford Award for Academic Clinical Professionalism, the highest award Baylor gives to a medical school faculty member.

“I am thrilled and honored to be chosen to participate in the growth of the new academic medical enterprise at the UCF College of Medicine,” Dr. Katz said. “What an exciting time it is in the maturation of the medical school. I look forward to working closely with all of UCF’s hospital and community partners in creating initiatives that reflect the changing healthcare landscape. My husband and I are eager to start our new life in Orlando.”

Dr. Katz received her M.D. at Boston University School of Medicine after earning an undergraduate degree in biology at Brown University. She did her internal medicine residency at Boston City Hospital and her fellowship training in pulmonary and critical care from The Pulmonary Center at Boston University School of Medicine. She sits on the center committee of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the governing body that accredits all CF centers.

Dr. Katz will join the medical school December 5.