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August 2002

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-An award-winning family physician with roots in rural Gadsden County has been appointed chair of the department of family medicine and rural health at the Florida State University College of Medicine.
Dr. Alma Littles will be responsible for directing the development and implementation of the college's family medicine education program.

"Dr. Littles is a wonderful family physician role model for our students," said Dr. Joseph E. Scherger, dean of the medical school. "She has demonstrated a tremendous degree of dedication to her patients, to her community, to teaching and to the medical profession."

Named Family Doctor of the Year by the Florida Academy of Family Physicians in 1993, Littles had a solo private practice in her hometown of Quincy, Fla., from 1989 to 1994 and went on to serve as medical director for Quincy Family Practice and Quincy Medical Group.

"Having come from one of Florida's most medically underserved, rural communities and returned there to practice, Dr. Littles has a deep, personal understanding of the health-care needs of rural Floridians, making her an ideal leader for a department that will focus heavily on addressing the state's rural health needs," Scherger said.

Littles comes to FSU from Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare, where she had served as director of the Family Practice Residency Program since 1999 and had been a member of the faculty since 1996.

Board certified in family practice, Littles has held a number of leadership positions in both the Florida Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians and served as president of the Capital Medical Society in 1996.

"I'm excited about the opportunity to become involved in the building of a medical school from the ground up, especially one whose primary mission is to train primary care physicians who will be equipped to practice in rural areas," Littles said. "Based on my own experiences, I believe this school will be a large part of the answer to improving access to care for the citizens of rural North Florida and other areas of the state in need of primary care doctors."

With the appointment of Dr. Littles, the medical school now has 54 full-time and 104 part-time faculty.