Bush appoints two UF professors to statewide advisory councils

Two University of Florida College of Medicine faculty members have been selected to participate on panels that will advise Florida lawmakers about programs for children and the elderly.

Gov. Jeb Bush recently appointed Jeffrey Dwyer to the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund Advisory Council for Elders and Steven Freedman to the fund’s Advisory Council for Children. Their terms end in January 2005. The fund is endowed by proceeds from the settlement of a state lawsuit against the tobacco industry filed under the late Gov. Lawton Chiles.

The 13-member councils will develop guidelines for evaluating programs and services, rank programs to be recommended to the Legislature and advise lawmakers on program funding levels.

Dwyer, a professor in the College of Medicine’s department of health policy and epidemiology, is the director of UF’s multidisciplinary Institute on Aging. Freedman, a professor of pediatrics and political science, is executive director of the statewide Institute for Child Health Policy based at UF.