Roger Smalligan, M.D., MPH, dean of the UAB School of Medicine Huntsville Regional Campus.Roger D. Smalligan, M.D., MPH, a longtime clinician-educator, has been named regional dean of the Huntsville Regional Medical Campus at the University of Alabama at BirminghamSchool of Medicine. Smalligan will come to UAB and Huntsville from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, Texas, where he is a regional chair and professor in the Department of Internal Medicine. Smalligan is also an adjunct professor in the Master of Public Health Program at Texas Tech and has served as health authority for the Potter-Randall Bi-City-County Health Department the past six years.
“We are very excited about the opportunity to come to Huntsville, based on the reputation of the community, the hospital and UAB,” Smalligan said. “Huntsville seems like a collegial place with a lot of potential for growth, and I see UAB in Huntsville playing an integral role in that growth, by training the next generation of physicians to care for the residents of north Alabama.”
Smalligan will officially join UAB on Jan. 15, 2017, succeeding Robert M. Centor, M.D., who is retiring from the School of Medicine after leading the Huntsville Regional Medical Campus for 12 years.
“Roger is a phenomenal physician who is dedicated not only to caring for his patients, but to sharing his knowledge and skill with medical students and residents,” said Selwyn M. Vickers, M.D., senior vice president for Medicine and dean of the UAB School of Medicine. “I believe he will be a transformative presence for our program in Huntsville, building on the strong foundation and partnership with Huntsville Hospital.”
The Huntsville Regional Medical Campus is home to both the Family Medicine Residency and Internal Medicine Residency programs, as well as the Rural Medicine Program, a medical student training program aimed to develop physicians with the skills to practice in rural areas and small towns. Each year, 72 third- and fourth-year students complete their clinical training at the Huntsville campus after completing the basic science curriculum in the first two years of medical school in Birmingham. HRMC’s primary teaching hospital is the Huntsville Hospital, a 941-bed hospital, which is the flagship hospital for the Huntsville Hospital Health System and is the second-largest in Alabama.
UAB Medicine Huntsville is the only multispecialty practice in north Alabama, composed of 30 faculty physicians providing care in four specialties: family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and psychiatry. In addition to faculty in the primary care departments of family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics, HRMC is supported by faculty in psychiatry, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery, and a broad spectrum of subspecialties. Over 350 physicians from Huntsville and the cities and towns across north Alabama serve as clinical faculty.
As regional dean for HRMC, Smalligan will also serve as president and CEO of The Valley Foundation, a 501(c)(3) faculty practice plan that serves as the business support for most of the UAB faculties’ clinical activity in Huntsville, supporting 85,000 annual patient encounters, including 60,000 outpatient visits per year.
“On behalf of CEO David Spillers and the Huntsville Hospital leadership team, we are excited to welcome a physician of Dr. Smalligan’s reputation and expertise to our medical community and look forward to collaborating on the training of future physicians for north Alabama,” said Robert Chappell, M.D., chief medical officer at Huntsville Hospital.
A native of Texas, Smalligan earned his undergraduate degree from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. and began his medical education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, graduating in 1987. He completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, before going back to Johns Hopkins to earn a master’s degree in public health.
Smalligan spent eight years, from 1996 to 2004, as medical director and staff physician of the Hospital Vozandes del Oriente, a 30-bed hospital in the jungle region of Ecuador. He also served on the faculty for five years at the Quillen College of Medicine East Tennessee State University before joining Texas Tech.
Smalligan and his wife, Annye, have four children: Dean, 23; Abby, 22; Tate, 18; and Jack, 15.