John A. Encandela, Ph.D., is Dean of Academic Affairs and the Designated Institution Official at the Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC) to help support educational and quality programs at the Level I Trauma Center and teaching hospital. Dr. Encandela is responsible for providing curricula and evaluation tools as well as ongoing support and training for faculty and residents at NUMC. Before coming the NUMC, Dr. Encandela served as the Director of the Graduate Medical Education Outcomes Project at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, which is the teaching hospital for Columbia University Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City. Dr. Encandela also holds two adjunct faculty positions in Schools of Public Health—one in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and the other in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. Dr. Encandela actively supports teaching and evaluation activities in both Schools.

Dr. Encandela has expertise in training healthcare professionals and evaluating these professionals as well as healthcare delivery programs. With a doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, he emphasized the Sociology of Medicine. Two issues were of particular focus in this program: ways in which residents are educated and physicians are socialized in their roles, and ways in which chronic diseases are managed in American healthcare. Both of these areas are of extreme importance at NUMC as we educate students and residents to deliver high-quality acute and chronic patient care. From 2002 to 2005, while he was a technical director at ORC Macro in Atlanta, Dr. Encandela managed the development and delivery of training in HIV/AIDS program monitoring and evaluation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Global AIDS Program (GAP). In this position, he spent time directly providing training to GAP field staff in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In the area of medical education, Dr. Encandela has been a part of the development of a Resident-as-Teacher curriculum that provides training for residents to be effective teachers of medical students; has participated in peer-reviewed studies of instruction and assessment of residents around issues of effective communication and operating within the larger system of healthcare; and has taken part in the design of faculty development workshops that support training and assessment of resident and medical student competencies. He is a member and Past President of the Board of Directors of the American Chronic Pain Association and has served on a number of peer review committees for health-related national and international journals and panels.