Meet the CHANCELLOR

David

S. Guzick, MD, PhD

The Fourth Chancellor of LSU Health Shreveport

David S. Guzick, MD, PhD, began as the fourth Chancellor of LSU Health Shreveport on January 9, 2023, after a national search. Dr. Guzick immediately began efforts to get entrenched in the community, interviewing with all three local TV stations and multiple publications as well as accepting an invitation to speak to the Downtown Rotary Club on January 24 after being on the job for twelve days.

When asked why he was interested in the chancellor position at LSU Health Shreveport, Dr. Guzick responded, “I was inspired by the vision set forth by Dr. William Tate, President of LSU. I watched a video detailing his goals and how he planned to achieve them. The goals were audacious and inspiring resulting in my interest in working for such a visionary. I was also struck by the incredibly positive impact of LSU Health Shreveport on the economy and health of the community, making the position very appealing based on my background and interests. I am extremely honored to have been selected as the Chancellor for LSU Health Shreveport and have become even more excited about the position after working with both LSU Health Shreveport and Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport leadership and in learning of the immense community support.”

As a second-generation Polish immigrant born in Brooklyn, pursuing a medical career had not occurred to Guzick until the summer after his freshman year of college when he visited his uncle, who was dying of leukemia, in the hospital. Impressed with the way everyone — caregivers and technicians — played their part to create a healing environment, the art and science of medicine left its stamp on Guzick, and he began his own personal journey of “aiming high.” The healing nature and grounding of scientific knowledge in medicine held inherent appeal for Guzick leading him to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology.

Dr. Guzick earned his medical and doctoral degrees from NYU as part of the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program. His PhD is in economics with specialty concentrations in health economics and econometrics. Following a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, he completed a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

During his fellowship, Guzick met his wife, Donna Giles, a clinical psychologist and noted sleep researcher. Recruited with his wife to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where they stayed for nine years, Guzick served as Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology, where he became a national figure in this field, making contributions that changed clinical practice in the management of polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis and infertility. “My decision to specialize in reproductive endocrinology came at a very interesting time for the field, the late 1970s, which marked the beginnings of in-vitro fertilization, or IVF,” Guzick shared. “I was lucky to be a part of a new field in reproductive medicine, as it transitioned from science fiction to an “experimental technique” to what has become a mature specialty that has helped millions of couples around the world start and grow their families.

It was his time in Pittsburgh that would prepare Guzick for his own rise in medical leadership and administration as he was recruited to the University of Rochester to serve as the Henry A. Thiede Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He served in this capacity for seven years before being appointed as the Dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester. He recollects moving into each of these leadership positions as a bigger jump than he imagined, stretching himself beyond the content areas in which he was expert and comfortable into broader responsibilities that came with a steep learning curve. His takeaway from his fourteen years at the University of Rochester was “the better the relationship between the schools and hospitals, the better off were both organizations.” In addition to serving as Dean, Guzick was the principal investigator for Rochester’s NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award. Continuously funded by NIH for over 20 years at that point, and internationally recognized for his research in reproductive medicine, Dr. Guzick was elected the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2004 and to the National Academy of Medicine in 2008.

Dr. Guzick was next recruited to the University of Florida (UF) to serve as the Senior Vice President for Health Affairs and President of UF Health. Under his leadership, the UF Health hospital system and six UF health science colleges were brought together as a functionally integrated academic health center, resulting in transformative improvements in patient care quality, NIH funding and educational innovation, as well as a dramatic expansion in education, research and clinical facilities. The Gainesville Sun characterized Dr. Guzick as a “Renaissance man of the healthcare world” based on being both a reproductive endocrinologist – who trained with the fathers of IVF - and an economist. Stepping down from his leadership responsibilities at UF in 2018, UF President Kent Fuchs stated that his “leadership over the past nine years has been transformative. He has created a culture of excellence and defined a vision for the future that has inspired our entire university. Rather than settling for regional excellence, he has led UF Health toward national leadership in research, education, and patient care.” Dr. Guzick then moved on to his next goal of authoring a book that combines his expertise in health economics with his hands-on experience in running a medical school and health system – The U.S. Health Care Industry: Balancing Care, Cost and Access, which was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2020.

Dr. Guzick has begun to implement his mantra of Aiming High at LSU Health Shreveport by writing a monthly Aiming High newsletter and establishing two new intramural research grants made available to existing faculty, contributing to the overall goal of doubling external research funding in the next five years. Also contributing to this goal is the recruitment of a director and other faculty members to conduct research at the new Bio Safety Level 3 Lab (BSL3), a process with which Dr. Guzick is actively engaged. His course on the U.S. health care industry has begun in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program, a degree offered jointly from LSU Health Shreveport and LSUS. He is also actively involved on a daily basis with the clinical enterprise, representing the LSU Health Shreveport side of the Ochsner LSU Health System partnership to foster a functionally integrated academic health center that will place the needs of our patients first, providing excellent care along with unsurpassed hospitality and service, a combination that will make LSU Health Shreveport the dominant academic health center in the Ark-La-Tx region.

The words of another individual (Coach Bear Bryant) known for “aiming high” seem fitting as Guzick undertakes the task at hand of shepherding LSU Health Shreveport to achieve its potential, “If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – and never quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.”