Jenny Baxley Lee

Dr. Jenny Baxley Lee serves as director of UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine and as master lecturer at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine. Informed by 25 years of field-building efforts in arts in health, Dr. Lee’s research is dedicated to promoting artists’ engagement and professional practices in healthcare and in communities and increasing access to the arts. She is currently undertaking lead authorship on an invited textbook for Routledge on Artists’ Engagement and Professional Practices in Healthcare and Community Health and has co-authored multiple invited chapters and research articles. Recent publications include an article in Nature Medicine and in Palliative Medicine.

Dr. Lee explores artists’ professional practices in facilitating meaningful arts engagement with individuals with palliative and end-of-life care needs. She has practiced telehealth-based dance/movement therapy with veterans and their families at the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center. This research yielded frequently cited publications on telehealth delivery of creative arts therapies, which became a vital contribution during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Lee has also practiced dance/movement therapy with UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine, working with children and adults with acute and chronic health issues. In addition, she has facilitated theatre and dance for health education and health promotion with middle and high school students in schools, juvenile justice, and other community settings from 2012 to 2018.  

Dr. Lee co-founded the Master’s degree program in Arts in Medicine. She served as both assistant director and graduate curriculum coordinator while collaboratively building a graduate degree program and two graduate certificates at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine, where she continues to serve as faculty. She delivers several annual professional development trainings, including an annual international research training program in partnership with UCL and the University of Edinburgh. From 2012 to 2019, she directed an annual study abroad course based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, entitled Arts for Health, Peace and Community Engagement in Northern Ireland. Dr. Lee is affiliated faculty with the School of Theatre and Dance and the STEM Translational Communication Center and has served on the Research and Curriculum Committees in the College of the Arts. She is an active member of the American Dance Therapy Association and served on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Dance Therapy as Book and Film Review Editor from 2013 to 2016.