The then newly minted senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of what we now know as UF Health cited Andrew Carnegie, who once said that “teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

From those early days through a nine-year tenure that has left a legacy of unprecedented progress, Guzick worked to mobilize faculty, staff and students to align the mission, vision, values and finances of our health colleges, research centers and institutes and hospitals, while simultaneously drawing the academic health center even closer to the university as a whole. He wrote that he embraced this philosophy “because I truly believe it’s the key to success for all of us partnering in this process. So I’m sure you’re wondering: Where do we go from here, and how do we get there? We focus on connection and communication. We support transparency. We craft a shared vision together.”

Our shared mission has always been to deliver high-quality, safe patient care; conduct innovative health science research; and educate health professionals while supporting community health. Guzick was a catalyst for a new unified approach to fuel this virtuous circle. He established integrated and cohesive governance of health affairs for UF and led the creation of new, unified strategic plans to guide decision-making. These cohesive five-year plans, with the inaugural “Forward Together” and then “The Power of Together,” and the metamorphosis of the organization from UF&Shands to UF Health, drove major accomplishments along the path that supported UF to become a Top 10 public university as he led us to move medicine forward.

As our executive leader, Guzick’s transformational leadership directed us through rapid and progressive change, with collaboration, teamwork and “unstoppable momentum” as guiding forces. He reinforced our passion: to put our patients and community at the center of all we do and ensure Quality is Job 1. He took our approach to translating scientific discovery into clinical advances to another level. And he led us to start with the ideal patient experience as our goal and work from that to galvanize faculty, staff, residents, students and volunteers to see the academic health system as a symbiotic whole to inspire the work we do.

Here at UF Health Shands, the hospital system’s clinical care purpose and the College of Medicine and health science center colleges’ research and education missions became more cohesive than ever. Nine years later, we are a robust, competitive and thriving hospital system that is a vital component of the university. Our statewide programs and affiliations ensure our expertise reaches the people who need our help most and supports our missions to care, teach and innovate.

We honor Guzick for his vision and leadership and look forward to seeing him around campus in his professorial bow tie as he continues to support our unstoppable momentum.

“The honor of serving the University of Florida and UF Health has been the capstone of my career. What a spectacular and personally meaningful journey! I am so proud of what we have accomplished together.”

— DAVID S. GUZICK, M.D., PH.D., FORMER UF SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF HEALTH AFFAIRS AND UF HEALTH PRESIDENT

“Dr. Guzick’s 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. With two beautiful new hospitals, record NIH funding and rapidly increasing numbers of faculty and staff colleagues, Dr. Guzick has given UF Health both the wings and the wind to soar.”

— KENT FUCHS, PH.D., PRESIDENT, UF

“When I joined UF Health, Dr. Guzick had been at the helm of UF Health for a year. I saw his tenacity to drive the academic health center forward, pressing us to make each day better than the day before. Throughout his tenure, he galvanized our focus around quality care and put patients first in every decision. He united faculty and staff and has been a visionary for progressive growth and innovation. With UF now in the Top 10 among public universities, Dr. Guzick’s leadership has been a key factor in that success.”

— ED JIMENEZ, CEO, UF HEALTH SHANDS

“Transformational leaders change people and their organizations and their cultures in significant and profound and long-lasting ways. From Forward Together to our subsequent Power of Together strategic plan, Dr. Guzick’s transformational leadership has built the ‘unstoppable momentum’ he referenced early on, and created a now indelible inflection point in our UF history. He has most certainly positioned UF Health for ongoing success.”

— MICHAEL GOOD, M.D., FORMER DEAN, UF COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

“Dr. Guzick created an environment focused on collaboration and taking advantage of the unique aspects of UF, the six health colleges, the UF Health Shands family of hospitals and UF Health Jacksonville, to make us greater than the sum of our parts. Whether it was in research collaboration, interdisciplinary education or clinical practice, the attitude around collaboration is simply different than it was prior to 2009. And for those of us who served under him, we have all benefited from his thoughtful mentoring and aspirational views of what we might become.”

— JULIE A. JOHNSON, PHARM.D., DEAN, UF COLLEGE OF PHARMACY

“Dr. Guzick’s contributions to the development of PHHP have been enormous. He helped define our identity and mission, highlighting research as an area where we would seek to make a major mark on the national scene, coupled with the breadth and diversity of our academic programs that range from bachelor’s to doctoral degrees and span both public health and the health professions. He stressed the importance of metrics to measure success and return on investment, and he highlighted the value of interdisciplinary collaborations in achieving our goals. Moreover, he provided both moral and tangible support to help us secure the resources needed to accomplish our mission.”

— MICHAEL G. PERRI, PH.D., DEAN, UF COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH PROFESSIONS

“Dr. Guzick pushed UF Self-Insurance Program staff to share staff talents more broadly with peer-reviewed publications, as well as at national and international presentations, which now total over 50 professional liability-related journals and conferences. The UF Health program has become a national model, extending its benefits beyond the boundaries of UF Health to providers and patients more globally. This is a tribute to Dr. Guzick’s deep conviction that sharing knowledge within the global health care community inevitably improves quality and enhances patient experience. Without hesitation these giant achievements would not have been achieved with Dr. Guzick’s vision, leadership and unwavering dedication to UF Health patients and providers.”

— RANDALL C. JENKINS, ESQ., PRESIDENT, HEALTHCARE EDUCATION INSURANCE CO. AND ADMINISTRATOR, SELF-INSURANCE PROGRAMS, UF

“Dr. Guzick has truly transformed the culture of our organization. He ensured that we achieved our goals by consistently refocusing our attention to the things that matter most, by encouraging each individual he interacted with to perform to the best of their ability, and celebrated both our collective and individual successes with equal vigor. I have been honored to have Dr. Guzick mentor me in the past, and I look forward to continuing that relationship in the new phase of his career in the future.”

— ELIZABETH B. RUSZCZYK, J.D., CIPP, C.H.C., CHRC, CPC-A, CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER, UF; VICE PRESIDENT OF COMPLIANCE AND PRIVACY, UF HEALTH SHANDS

“Dr. Guzick set out a compelling case for the need to invest and achieve excellence in clinical quality and operations in order to attain academic and clinical preeminence. He also understood the barriers we would face and had a practical sense of the complexities of caring for highly complex patients, especially in financially uncertain times. Because of this, he had a very clear vision of the need to integrate UF Health Shands and the Health Science Center in order to succeed. Following the goals set out by ‘The Power of Together’ under his lead, which laid the foundation for making Quality Job 1, it was clear to us as a system that the linkage to preeminence and strength of patient care was ensuring clinicians, trainees, scientists and administrators worked together to deliver excellent patient care.”

— ERIC ROSENBERG, M.D., INTERIM CHIEF QUALITY OFFICER, UF HEALTH SHANDS; ASSOCIATE CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, UF HEALTH SHANDS; AND CHIEF OF GENERAL INTERNAL MEDICINE, UF COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

“How can one adequately sum up the contributions Dr. Guzick has made during his tenure here at UF Health? Like the title of his column, he got us all ‘On the Same Page.’ From his first days on the job, it was clear he placed great value on communicating effectively. He understood the importance of letting everyone know not just what was happening but why. He used data to back up his points. But he also was inspirational, with every communication cloaked in what we could all do for a goal greater than ourselves. ‘A big part of getting from us and them to we is communication,’ he once wrote. I couldn’t agree more. And amid all the progress, as we’ve moved medicine forward with a bold new vision for UF Health, he’s done just that, admirably.”

— MELANIE FRIDL ROSS, M.S.J., E.L.S., CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, UF HEALTH

“I have spent 42 years at UF Health — for almost 20 of those years, I served as chair of the department of neurosurgery. Under David Guzick’s guidance, UF Health has grown at a record pace, clinically and academically. He has fostered a remarkable improvement in our culture of patient quality and safety. I admire him and hold him in the highest regard. He will be extraordinarily difficult to replace.”

— WILLIAM A. FRIEDMAN, M.D., PROFESSOR AND FORMER CHAIR, UF DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSURGERY