After overseeing significant steps in the city’s public health, Louisville Metro Health and Wellness Director Dr. Adewale Troutman is leaving his position in early November to take a post in south Florida.

The popular department head will become director of the University of South Florida’s Public Health Practice and Public Health Leadership Institute in Tampa, where he will also serve as a consultant to the Department of Community Health in Tampa and will be a full professor at USF.

“It is my conviction that health is a basic human right and we must all continue to focus on eliminating obstacles that prevent the equitable application of that right to all people,” he said. “Louisville has taken significant steps to achieve that goal and I am proud of the part I have played.”

Mayor Jerry Abramson has selected Dr. Matt Zahn, medical director for the Louisville Public Health and Wellness Department, to serve as interim director of the department when Troutman leaves.

In 2003, Abramson hired Troutman as the city’s public health director to help raise the bar on health and wellness. And for the past seven years, Troutman, who is one of the mayor’s most popular appointees, has worked to increase awareness of healthier lifestyles and led on many initiatives, including the controversial smoking ban that passed the Metro Council in 2008.

Among the major accomplishments:

· Implementing the Mayor’s Healthy Hometown Movement, a communitywide effort to increase physical activity and healthy eating;

· Creating the Center for Health Equity to reduce social and economic disparities to good health and wellness;

· Managing a successful citywide inoculation program for the H1N1 virus that protected more than 300,000 children and adults.

“Ade has made a tremendous mark on this community in a relatively short time,” Abramson said in a statement. “He has delivered on the promise to help citizens improve their health and wellness and to make Louisville a healthier place for everyone.”

With only four months left until a new mayor is inaugurated, Troutman’s departure is an unfortunate but natural process of an outgoing administration.

However, Troutman leaving will also mean his wife, Denise Vazquez Troutman, who has served as president and CEO of The Center for Women and Families for more than four years, will leave her post effective March 2011 to join her husband.

The Center for Women and Families plans to begin a search for a new president and CEO next month, said Steven Bowling, Director of Community Engagement at the center.