Dr. Dainia Baugh, MD, ABIHM
Born and raised in St. Andrew, Jamaica, Dr. Baugh graduatedfrom Immaculate Conception High School, Dr. Baugh received her Bachelors Degree from Dillard University, in New Orleans, Louisiana and went on to complete Medical School, Internship and Residency training at the University of Tennessee, College of Health Sciences in Memphis, Tennessee.
Post training, Dr Baugh assumed a Clinical Consultancy practice in Melbourne Florida and was appointed Medical Director, Space Coast Marine Institute, Melbourne, Florida and Co-Medical Director of the Arbors at Melbourne Skilled Nursing Facility. She served as Consultant in Internal Medicine at University Center Imaging, and at Melbourne Internal Medicine Associates, Melbourne, Florida.
Recruited to Nashville, she joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. During her tenure at Vanderbilt, she also served as Medical Director, Psychiatric Hospital of Vanderbilt.
While in Nashville, Dr. Baugh’s interests in Preventive Health, Risk Prevention and Management and her focus on decreasing health disparities resulted in the Founding of The Medical Foundation, which organized, staffed and funded medical missions to West Africa and the Caribbean.
During this time Dr. Baugh also founded a thriving Medical Practice, Nashville Internal Medicine Associates, serving as its Medical Director from 2002 – 2011. She continued to be interested in decreasing barriers to care and exploring new modalities to extending health; spurring an interest in Integrative Medicine with additional training and certification in this area.
Her community involvement and professional standing saw her appointed to thePublic Health Emergency Advisory Committeeby Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. She served in this capacity from 2006-2010.
As a natural progression of the work she had been doing in the areas of reducing health disparities and in improving access to care in developing economies, Dr Baugh turned her focus more squarely back home in Jamaica and played a pivotal role as Co-Founder of the Heart Institute of the Caribbean, (HIC) in Kingston.
With active International practices Dr. Baugh brought a broad perspective to her clinical, advocacy and administrative roles. She has served as President of the Heart Institute of the Caribbean and has overseen HIC’s individually tailored heart disease prevention and wellness programmes, ensuring a focus on international standards and best practices since inception. She has also served as Chairman of the Heart Institute of the Caribbean Foundation with the stated mission to improve access to, and the quality of cardiovascular care to the people of Jamaica and the region. Through matching grants from HIC, care is subsidized and has been extended to thousands of people who would otherwise be unable to access same.
Dr. Baugh’s healthcare advocacy work has coexisted with scholarship. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Cardiology at the University of Technology and has coauthored a book chapter as well as multiple publications in peer- reviewed international medical journals.
Elected to the Medical Council of Jamaica in 2016, Dr. Baugh chairs the Public Relations Committee.
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS:
- Medical Association of Jamaica
- American College of Physicians
- Association of Black Cardiologists