Amelia Schlak

Dr. Schlak is an Assistant Professor in the University of Florida College of Nursing and Director of the Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality. She is a nurse scientist and health services researcher whose work focuses on how health care systems, organizations, and resources shape care delivery and patient outcomes.

Dr. Schlak earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Florida and later worked as a registered nurse on a medical-surgical step-down unit. She earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania as an NIH T32 predoctoral fellow and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholar, followed by NIH T32 postdoctoral training in comparative and cost-effectiveness research at Columbia University.

Following her postdoctoral training, Dr. Schlak was selected as a Science & Technology Policy Fellow through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society. As an Executive Branch Fellow, she was placed with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development. Following her fellowship, she remained with the Office of Research and Development as a Scientific Program Manager and Review Officer.

In this role, Dr. Schlak managed a multimillion-dollar national portfolio of health services research and led a national scientific review panel spanning aging and long-term care, mobility and function, palliative and end-of-life care, the health care workforce, and rural health. She also led national research initiatives focused on Long COVID, nursing research, and age-friendly health care.

In 2026, Dr. Schlak returned to the University of Florida, where she leads an interdisciplinary research program and the next chapter of the Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality, with a focus on improving health care delivery and outcomes for Floridians.

Dr. Schlak’s research examines how the organization and delivery of health care, including the allocation of health system resources such as nurse staffing, education, and work environments, influence patient outcomes.

A central goal of her research is to generate evidence that helps health care leaders make better decisions about how resources are organized and invested to improve care for patients. Using health services research methods, she seeks to identify modifiable system-level factors that can strengthen care delivery and support better health outcomes.