BayCare Leader Brings Varied Background, Education to Mission & Ethics Role

CLEARWATER, Fla., March 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Jojo Dyachim is the new vice president of Mission & Ethics for BayCare Health System. He has held several positions in the health system over the last decade, most recently director of the department he now oversees in the top role.

He assumed the position March 1, ahead of the April retirement of Colleen Walters, who has been BayCare's vice president of Mission & Ethics since 2019.

Dr. Dyachim said he was first drawn to not-for-profit BayCare, the largest academic health system serving West Central Florida, by its dedication to its mission and values, which guide BayCare's almost 34,000 team members to care for their patients and the public with compassion and excellence.

Dr. Dyachim's first role at BayCare was chaplain and Catholic coordinator at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa from 2017–2021. He also was spiritual care manager at BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg before being named systemwide director of Mission & Ethics in 2023.

As director, he made significant contributions to Walters' efforts to strengthen the organizational infrastructure around the department's focuses, which include spiritual care, palliative care, mission, ethics, Faith Community Nursing and global health.

Under Walters' guidance, "we expanded virtually to support patients, horizontally to new sites and vertically toward Graduate Medical Education, all under a singular strategic aim that moved us from catching up to leading the way," said Lou Galdieri, BayCare's chief administrative officer. "Dr. Dyachim's broad educational background and diverse experiences have equipped him exceptionally well to lead BayCare forward in these vital areas."

Dr. Dyachim grew up in northwestern Nigeria, where his family still lives. He received two degrees — a Bachelor of Philosophy and a Master of Theology — from Pontifical Urban University in Rome, and his doctorate in health care mission leadership is from Loyola University in Chicago. Before coming to BayCare, he was vice principal of St. Francis College in Zonkwa, Nigeria, and campus minister in the Catholic Student Center at the University of South Florida.

"BayCare is a health system that truly embodies its mission and values. I am deeply honored and elated to now serve as vice president of Mission & Ethics," Dr. Dyachim said. "I am excited to advance our Mission & Ethics services, keeping us grounded in our mission as BayCare continues to grow and evolve, as well as promoting the moral agency of our clinicians and team members, upholding high ethical standards across the continuum of care, and fostering the conditions for human flourishing for the communities we are privileged to serve."

While in his previous role as director of Mission & Ethics, Dr. Dyachim designed and implemented ethics education across the BayCare system; created a clinical ethics curriculum for BayCare Graduate Medical Education programs; and organized the annual BayCare Ethics Conference, which includes practical workshops to help participants address complex ethical challenges in health care.

Dr. Dyachim chairs the BayCare Ethics Council, which provides strategic leadership and oversight of ethics services at all 16 hospitals and all ambulatory services sites. He serves as the ethics subject matter expert on the BayCare Institutional Review Board, the Artificial Intelligence Governance Steering Committee and the Executive Steering Committee on Inclusion and Belonging. Among many other duties, he also is responsible for providing guidance to assure the Catholic identity of BayCare's six Catholic hospitals.

About BayCare

BayCare is a leading not-for-profit academic health care system that connects individuals and families to a wide range of services at 16 hospitals, including a children's hospital, and hundreds of other convenient locations throughout the Tampa Bay and central Florida regions. The system is West Central Florida's largest provider of behavioral health and pediatric services and its provider group, BayCare Medical Group, is one of the largest in the region. BayCare's diverse network of ambulatory services includes laboratories, imaging, surgical centers, BayCare Urgent Care locations, wellness centers and one of Florida's largest home care agencies, BayCare HomeCare. BayCare's mission is to improve the health of all it serves through community-owned, health care services that set the standard for high-quality, compassionate care. For more information, visit BayCare.org. 

SOURCE BayCare Health System