Nancy Davis, PhD, has left her position as CME director of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) to become founding executive director of the National Institute for Quality Improvement in Education (NIQIE), a spin-off of  CE City.

NIQIE aims to close the CME-QI gap. Her replacement, Mindi McKenna, PhD, MBA, had been an assistant professor at Rockhurst University.

Davis, who was CME director since 2002, cited the academy’s leadership in seeing the “value and need for integrating quality and education,” an issue that has grown in importance since ACCME released updated accreditation criteria. Leaving the academy, she said, was an acknowledgement that “It’s really bigger than family medicine.”

While McKenna, whom Davis recruited, has never produced CME, Davis doesn’t see that as an obstacle: “They’ve got plenty of good people at the academy who can do that.”