- Date:
- 2017-09-13
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- On 13 September 2017, the University of Virginia proudly dedicates as Pinn Hall the medical education and research building formerly known as Jordan Hall. The building’s new name recognizes UVA medical graduate Vivian W. Pinn MD, Class of 1967, founding director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pinn was the second African American woman to graduate from the School of Medicine and went on to a distinguished career in pathology and in medical leadership. One of the medical school’s four colleges bears Dr. Pinn’s name, and she is an active presence in Pinn College student life. This Medical Center Hour celebrates Dr. Pinn and her accomplishments and calls attention to critical current issues of fair and full access for underrepresented minorities, especially African American women, as students, practitioners, and leaders in medicine but also as beneficiaries of health care. Individually and institutionally, what can we learn from Dr. Pinn to ensure that her legacy matters? Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and the Generalist Scholars Program, in conjunction with UVA's dedication of Pinn Hall and the UVA medical students' celebration of Primary Care Week
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- Date:
- 2017-03-29
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- The history of eugenics is often characterized as a cautionary tale of life in the bad old days, when pseudoscientific assumptions about genetic determinism provided a respectable veneer that enabled barely submerged racism, xenophobia, and blatant discrimination against persons with disabilities to take root in American law. Some argue that, today, our science is sound, our attitudes enlightened; we need not be hobbled by fear of long-expired bad eugenic habits. In this Medical Center Hour, Paul Lombardo, who has written extensively on eugenics and the law in America, challenges such assumptions, asserting that the same tendencies that led to a century of eugenic law and policy continue to inform our public debate over democratic values and the proper role of science as a tool for solving social problems. The Joan Echtenkamp Klein Memorial Lecture in the History of the Health Sciences Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Date:
- 2017-03-22
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Have you ever received an unsolicited email from a publisher you’ve never heard of inviting you to submit a paper to a journal with a generic-but-believable-sounding name or a conference abroad or at an airport hotel? These publishers may advertise their journals as “open access” and promise to make your work visible to well-known indices; they may claim “impact factors” and editorial board members who are leaders in their field. All that’s required of you is a modest fee—an "author’s processing charge"—and these publishers can deliver the lifeblood of any academic career: a peer-reviewed publication. There’s just one catch: the journals are fake. These journals are labeled "predatory," and they are sometimes associated with the broader open-access movement. This Medical Center Hour tours the strange world of predatory publishing and describes some of its more outrageous excesses. But, as Brandon Butler will argue, the fake journals are just a distraction. The academy today faces more serious challenges as it wrestles with how best to share research and knowledge. How should academia confront the predatory moves of its most well-established publishing partners and take better advantage of open access? A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2017-03-15
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- The caregiver—whether a family member pressed into service or an underpaid home-care aide—is a representative figure of our time. This status is paradoxical because actual caregivers (so often female) do their work largely out of sight and almost in secret. It is an uncanny representative figure whom we do not see. Writer and scholar David Morris spent over a decade as caregiver for his late wife, Ruth, a medical librarian who in her mid-fifties began to show signs of dementia, most likely earlier-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In this Medical Center, Morris describes his experience but also uses his personal caregiving as a fulcrum for opening up larger questions about what biomedicine often overlooks in its molecular vision of illness. Desire is the neglected force that Morris sees as basic to illness, and it is the role of desire in illness that he seeks to clarify. Desire, it turns out, also offers an unanticipated common ground where health-care professionals—caregivers too in their medical role—may meet with patients and families in mutual, richer understanding. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2017-03-01
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Where you live in a particular U.S. city determines your predicted life expectancy. Neighborhood is destiny, in a way. For example, in New Orleans, there is a twenty-five-year difference in life expectancy from one parish to another only three miles away. This pattern of great gaps in health status, even over short distances, repeats itself in New York, Chicago, the Bay Area, and many other American cities, with harsh consequences. In 2005, Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the first cities to recognize such dramatic neighborhood variations in life expectancy, with a fourteen-year difference in life expectancy between north Tulsa and midtown—and to take action. In this presentation, Dr. Gerard Clancy describes specific initiatives and lessons learned on the ten-year journey, from 2005 to 2015, to reverse these health disparities and improve the health of the people in north Tulsa. The successes of the past decade have inspired a new ten-year initiative in Tulsa focused on mental health system improvements. Co-presented with the Brodie Medical Education Award Committee, the Academy of Distinguished Educators, and the Department of Medicine
- Date:
- 2017-02-22
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Does some aspect of our personality survive bodily death? Long a philosophical and theological question, in the 20th century this became the subject of scientific research. Fifty years ago, in 1967, Ian Stevenson, then chair of UVA's Department of Psychiatry, created a research unit—now named the Division of Perceptual Studies—to study what, if anything, of the human personality survives after death. Dr. Stevenson's own research investigated hundreds of accounts of young children who claimed to recall past lives. In this Medical Center Hour, faculty from the Division of Perceptual Studies highlight the unit's work since its founding, including studies of purported past lives, near-death experiences, and mind-brain interactions in phenomena such as deep meditation, veridical out-of-body experiences, deathbed visions, apparent communication from deceased persons, altered states of consciousness, and terminal lucidity in persons with irreversible brain damage. As the division enters its second half-century, what are its research priorities and partnerships? History of the Health Sciences Lecture Co-presented with Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library and the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, UVA
- Date:
- 2017-02-08
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Health care information can confuse doctors and patients alike. What are the risks and benefits of mammograms, of aggressive blood pressure control, of EKGs, of lung cancer screening, of heart stents? When patients can’t accurately answer these questions, they find it difficult to have sensible conversations about their health care with their doctors. And lack of comprehensible medical information not only interferes with shared decision-making between physician and patient but can also lead to over-screening and over-treatment, with deleterious consequences for patients as well as for the health care delivery system and medical reform. In this Medical Center Hour, internist Andy Lazris and scientist Erik Rifkin assess this challenging situation and then present, as one solution, a novel decision aid called a Benefit Risk Characterization Theater (BRCT). When health care information is conveyed simply, factually, and in a non-numerical format, true shared decisions become possible. They offer BRCTs to explain the risks/benefits of some common medical interventions and demonstrate how this approach can improve health care delivery, lead to greater patient satisfaction, and result in less over-treatment, one of the main drivers of low-value health care cost. Co-presented with the Department of Medicine
- Date:
- 2017-02-01
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Understanding and responding to patients' complex health needs and challenges requires physicians--and all healthcare providers--to think creatively. Knowledge and information are not enough. We must prepare future physicians to think differently and to be mindful of how they think. But future physicians must also possess the skills of a creative artist, because, for many doctors on the clinical frontlines, medicine is a science-using creative art. In this Medical Center Hour, emergency medicine physician, medical educator, and fiction writer Jay Baruch argues that necessary transformations in medicine and medical education will demand new interdisciplinary skills and methods--and essential contributions from artists, writers, designers, and humanities scholars. The Moore Lecture of the School of Medicine
- Date:
- 2017-01-25
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- The stethoscope, an extension of the clinician's ear, is perhaps modern medicine's most characteristic symbol. Through it, doctors listen for the body to disclose its secrets. Doctors must also listen to their patients' stories. In fact, as Oliver Sacks said, "The first act of medicine is listening to a personal story." But hasn't the clinician's ear lost much of its importance now that procedures and machines can give us more direct access to pathology? In this Richardson Lecture, physician and poet John Coulehan affirms the importance of the clinician's aural attention in the clinical encounter and considers three aspects of the metaphorical clinical ear. First, listening to patients, an active process with vertical (deep listening) and horizontal (narrative) dimensions. Second, listening to the heart, the reflective core of clinical practice. And, finally, hearing the resonance of our own healing words. In medicine, the word can be an instrument of healing. Co-presented with the Office of Quality and Performance Improvement, UVA Health System
- Date:
- 2016-11-28
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Health information technology (health IT), including electronic health records (but much, much more), enables health care providers--from individual clinicians to widely networked health care organizations--to better manage patient care through streamlined sharing of health information. Since 2004, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has led U.S. efforts to deploy advanced health IT in order to improve clinical service delivery and support patient engagement. As a result, nearly every hospitalization and most doctor visits now have a digital footprint, and an extraordinary amount of health data exists that simply didn't a decade ago. The health IT goal now is to foster seamless and secure data sharing to improve the health and care of individuals and populations alike. In this special Medical Center Hour, Dr. Vindell Washington, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, introduces this key national initiative and cites the promise and chief challenges for this increasingly central component of our nation's health care system. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2016-11-09
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign introduced the theme “Morning in America," promoting an image of the U.S. as a hopeful nation moving toward a better future. As one campaign advertisement asserted, “It’s morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better.” Fast forward to 2016. “Hopeful” or making the country “prouder" aren't descriptors most Americans would apply to either this presidential campaign or the contenders. One day post-election, what do experts think will be the “better future” under our new President and Congress? And how might the new President’s health care agenda be felt in the Commonwealth of Virginia? A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2016-10-19
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- With malaria a real threat to American troops' fighting fitness, the U.S. government during World War II mounted an all-out hunt for a malaria cure. Tropical-disease researchers with the Rockefeller Foundation took the lead on a secret project that adopted German research models and methods, including use of institutionalized Americans—inmates in six mental hospitals and several large prisons—both for culturing the parasites that cause malaria (there was no animal model) and for testing experimental drugs against the disease. After thousands of failed starts (and much human harm), the researchers had their "magic bullet": a German antimalarial compound captured in battle. This drug, reformulated in the U.S., is chloroquine, one of the most important pharmaceuticals ever made to fight malaria. In this Medical Center Hour, public health journalist Karen Masterson and infectious diseases specialist Dr. Richard Pearson delve into this tale of secret science in the service of war efforts and into research that was conducted before promulgation of federal rules and regulations governing human participation in biomedical research. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series of Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Date:
- 2016-10-12
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- First identified in 1947 and first known to cause human illness in 1953, Zika virus was seldom seen during the next 60 years. Starting in 2013, however, sizable outbreaks of human infection occurred, and in 2015 Zika appeared in the Americas, first in Brazil, then much more widely. The mosquito-borne virus also began making dramatic headlines. Zika was discovered to be transmissible during pregnancy, with serious, even devastating neurological injury to the baby, and transmissible between sexual partners, with risks to a fetus in the event of pregnancy. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared Zika a global public health emergency. The 2016 Hayden-Farr Lecture by Dr. Lyle Petersen, Incident Manager for Zika Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is an update on Zika--the science and the medical, public, health, environmental, social, and ethical implications that make this disease an urgent global challenge. The Hayden-Farr Lecture in Epidemiology and Virology/Medical Grand Rounds Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and the Office of the Hospital Epidemiologist, UVA Health System
- Date:
- 2016-10-05
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Thirty-five years after the discovery of AIDS, the story of this disease and the momentous scientific, medical, political, and social changes it occasioned is rich and complicated, even sensational. In 1981, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, a young UCLA immunologist, saw--and published a New England Journal of Medicine article about--a cluster of five cases of immune dysfunction and unusual opportunistic infections in gay men. Not long after, as personal physician to Hollywood actor and AIDS patient Rock Hudson, Dr. Gottlieb became the medical face of this terrifying epidemic. In this Medical Grand Rounds/Medical Center Hour, Dr. Bruce Hillman, a medical school classmate of Michael Gottlieb, probes the war of egos, money, academic power, and Hollywood clout that advanced AIDS research in its first decade even as it compromised the medical scientist who discovered the disease. Dr. Hillman draws on interviews with Dr. Gottlieb and others to chronicle one of the most important and contentious medical discoveries of our time. Medical Grand Rounds/History of the Health Sciences Lecture Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series of Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Date:
- 2016-09-28
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Hospitals and clinics and safety-net organizations across the U.S. are increasingly challenged to provide medically appropriate care to undocumented and uninsured immigrants. These "patients without passports" do not qualify for public benefits that finance health care for low income persons and often lack other means to secure care for themselves and their families. In this Medical Center Hour, Nancy Berlinger, co-director of The Hastings Center’s Undocumented Patients project, explores the ethical and practical dimensions of health care access for this cohort of immigrants, drawing on data from Virginia and other states and on her work with New York City policymakers to improve health care access for vulnerable populations. UVA emergency medicine physician David Burt offers a local perspective. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture Co-presented with Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life
- Date:
- 2016-09-21
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Nalini Nadkarni is known as "The Queen of the Rainforest Canopy," being a pioneer in the field of forest canopy research and in public engagement about the plants and animals that live in the treetops. Her interest in rainforest dynamics and in the response of rainforests to disturbances such as harvesting, fire, and climate change has led her to invite input from experts in diverse other fields that also study disruption and recovery--economics, neuroscience, refugee studies, human development, and traffic engineering, to name a few. Exchanges with these experts have given Professor Nadkarni novel insights into theory and models that foster better understanding of disturbance, recovery, and resilience. Unexpectedly, in 2015, this work also proved personally useful as Professor Nadkarni recovered from extensive trauma sustained when she fell 50 feet from the top of a tree while doing forest canopy fieldwork. In this Medical Center Hour/Medical Grand Rounds, she shares her insights and offers applications for medicine--especially, to the specifics of critical care, and, more generally, to healing. Medical Grand Rounds / A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture Co-presented with the Department of Medicine
- Date:
- 2016-09-14
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- What happens when an extroverted six-year-old dog and her introverted human partner enter the local public nursing home as a therapy dog team? This was the question writer Sue Halpern (nervously) asked herself when she and her dog Pransky began their work at the Helen Porter Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Middlebury VT. In this Medical Center Hour, Halpern revisits the remarkable experiences she and Pransky had over six years with the nursing home residents, experiences that continued even after Pransky's health declined. She also speaks to the increasingly recognized value of introducing therapy animals into medical settings and the significant physical and emotional benefits that follow—for patients, staff, and therapy teams. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2016-09-07
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Opiate abuse and addiction in the U.S. population have reached epidemic proportions, with one result being that primary care practices increasingly see patients for whom addiction is the presenting, or exacerbating, problem. But are primary care practitioners actively engaged in treating addiction? Unfortunately, no, says Dr. Hughes Melton, a primary care physician and Virginia's Chief Deputy Commissioner of Public Health and Preparedness. They lack the practical training and helpful mindset to approach addiction, but, also, addiction is more than a medical problem, with multiple stakeholders beyond patient and family, doctor, and clinic. In this Medical Center Hour, Dr. Melton and two Generalist Scholars--students preparing for careers in primary care--consider what primary care practitioners need in order to care effectively for this urgent population health problem: practical skills and informed attitudes, to be sure, but also the will and nuanced capabilities to be robust social leaders in the community. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture Co-presented with the Generalist Scholars Program and the Department of Public Health Sciences in observance of Primary Care Week at UVA
- Date:
- 2016-04-01
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- How might the creative arts, as a symbolic and emotional language, help improve well-being in late life? Anne Basting is an acclaimed practitioner and advocate of using the arts to address issues in aging. In this Medical Center Hour, she explores her own creative research and the most promising new practices for improving the lives of elders and caregivers alike. The Koppaka Family Foundation Lecture in the Medical Humanities Co-presented with the Southern Gerontological Society Annual Meeting
- Date:
- 2016-03-23
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Alice Dreger’s newest book, Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, had its origins in social and scientific controversies having to do with the politics of sex, especially social and medical treatment of so-called intersex individuals. Ms. Dreger’s investigations into this aspect of human identity and intersex rights engaged her with both sides of a heated debate and also with issues of freedom and justice in science. As she says, “Science and social justice require each other to be healthy, and both are critically important to human freedom. . . . [P]ursuit of evidence is probably the most pressing moral imperative of our time. All of our work as scholars, activities, and citizens of democracy depends on it. Yet it seems that, especially when questions of human identity are concerned, we’ve built up a system in which scientists and social justice advocates are fighting in ways that poison the soil on which both depend. It’s high time we think about this mess we’ve created, about what we’re doing to each other and to democracy itself.” In this Medical Center Hour, Ms. Dreger addresses these concerns—for science, justice, and academic freedom—at a time when pursuit of knowledge can clash with established interests, worldviews, and ideas about social progress. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
- Date:
- 2016-03-16
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Theresa Brown became a nurse-who-writes quite accidentally: she had a bad experience at work, wrote it down, and sent what she'd written to the New York Times. To her surprise, the newspaper published it, to great acclaim. From that column came the contract for Ms. Brown's first book, Critical Care, and she also began writing regularly for the Times, proud to have this chance to give voice to the often under-recognized nursing profession. Only lately, though, while writing her second book, The Shift, did Ms. Brown realize not just how much her nursing gives shape to her writing, but also how her writing influences her nursing. There's much to mull over in health care and usually not much time to do that. Writing forces Ms. Brown to reflect. She learns both positives and negatives about her nursing work in the process of putting that work into words. In this Medical Center Hour, Ms. Brown talks about how writing, which she loves, makes her a better nurse. The Catherine Strader McGehee Memorial Lecture of the School of Nursing Co-presented with the School of Nursing, the Virginia Festival of the Book, and Hospital Drive
- Date:
- 2016-03-02
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- The first global wave of reform in modern medical education occurred early in the 20th century, following the Flexner report. The second wave came in the latter half of that same century, led by innovations in problem-based learning and community orientation. Recently, the Lancet Commission called for a third wave of reform to create transformative system-based medical education that is socially accountable. This may be a fine aspiration, but is it possible? How can we translate new understandings from neuroscience, sociology, and the sciences of learning to meet this aspiration? In doing so, may we also transform research on medical education from eminence-based to evidence-based medical education? How accountable are we prepared to be for the results of our efforts? And to whom? In his Brodie Medical Education Award Lecture, Dr. Paul Worley draws on evidence from medical schools around the world to explore these critical questions and consider the challenge that social accountability brings to academic medicine's combined research, education, and service mission. The Brodie Medical Education Award Lecture Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and the Brodie Medical Education Award Committee, in association with the School of Medicine’s Medical Education Week, 29 February-4 March 2016.
- Date:
- 2016-02-24
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- In 1943, Albert Schatz, a young PhD student at New Jersey's Rutgers Agricultural College, was working on a wartime project testing bacteria from farmyard soil when he discovered streptomycin, a new antibiotic that was the first effective drug against the global killer tuberculosis. Schatz’s professor, Selman Waksman, claimed all credit for the discovery, calling Schatz a mere bench worker, and secretly enriched himself with royalties once the drug was patented by pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck. Schatz fought back in what was one of the most vicious battles ever for credit of a major scientific discovery. Schatz won the title of "co- discoverer" and a share of the royalties, but, in 1952, Waksman alone was awarded a Nobel Prize. Schatz disappeared into academic obscurity. This Medical Center Hour features journalist Peter Pringle, whose recent book Experiment Eleven probes this gripping, scandalous story and its diverse global repercussions— for scientific inquiry and mentoring, for research ethics, and for the evolution of Big Pharma. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Date:
- 2016-02-17
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Our bodies are malleable, changing with age and the demands we place on them. And throughout our life, how we stand—our posture—defines us as healthy or ill, able or disabled, beautiful or ugly, even human or not human. The history of posture is also the history of our reading of human anatomy. From the ancients to the moderns, how the body’s anatomy is understood has shaped understandings of what is human (did Neanderthal Man “stand up straight” or slouch?), what is beautiful (“Posture Queen” competitions in 20th century America), what is patriotic (no slouching in ranks!). What we ascribe to upright posture is very much being the perfect human, today and projected into the past. In this Medical Center Hour, distinguished scholar Sander Gilman reflects on how our understanding of posture figures in the history of anatomy and how the history of anatomy has helped craft our understanding of posture. What do shifting cultural perspectives on bodily uprightness tell us about the claims society makes with respect to who we are and what we are able to do? Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library; and the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life. This program is also offered in conjunction with UVA's second biennial disability studies symposium, "Disability Across the Disciplines," 19 February 2016.
- Date:
- 2016-01-27
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- In the making of a doctor, the residency is the principal formative experience. Its three to nine years of supervised practical learning are the crucible in which medical graduates acquire specialty knowledge and skills, forge a professional identity, and develop the values, attitudes, and behaviors for a lifetime of practice. While there have long been tensions within and around residency, physician-historian Kenneth Ludmerer's new book, Let Me Heal, a history of residency in the U.S. since its 19th century origins, comes at a time when training programs are pressured as never before by government regulation, workforce changes, shifts in disease patterns and sites of care, and highly commercialized health care. In this Medical Center Hour, Dr. Ludmerer mines the history of residency for lessons to address current concerns about medical education and to assure we can make the best doctors for the 21st century. The Joan Echtenkamp Klein Memorial Lecture in the History of the Health Sciences Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
- Date:
- 2016-01-20
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Chocolate has been special to human beings for millennia. In our time and culture as in earlier centuries and other cultures, claims abound regarding chocolate's health effects, positive and otherwise. What is it about chocolate—chemically and culturally—that makes it so distinctive in our diets, our emotional lives, our celebrations? Why do we love it so, and what does it do to/for us? In this Medical Center Hour, local chocolatier Tim Gearhart offers insights into chocolate's appeal and effects and gives a glimpse of the craft of artisan chocolate-making. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2015-11-18
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Early in her own training in psychology a decade ago, Casey Schwartz discovered that contemporary neuroscience and psychoanalysis are entangled in a conflict almost as old as the disciplines themselves. Many neuroscientists, if they think about psychoanalysis at all, view it as outdated, arbitrary, and subjective, while many psychoanalysts decry neuroscience as lacking the true texture of human experience. Yet some are now fighting passionately to bring the two fields together, including Mark Solms, a South African psychoanalyst, neuropsychologist, dream researcher, and towering presence in the effort to grow the hybrid discipline that he himself calls neuropsychoanalysis. Ms. Schwartz has written this story in her new book, In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis. In this Medical Center Hour, she tracks and interprets the ongoing struggle to define what we mean by the mind, the brain, and everything in between. History of the Health Sciences Lecture Co-presented with History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series and the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
- Date:
- 2015-11-11
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Over the last half-century, pain medicine has been defined by controversy: when is pain real? Does too-liberal, overly compassionate relief create addiction? Is chronic pain a legitimate basis for disability claims and long-term benefits? What should we do when end-of-life pain care resembles physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia? Professor Keith Wailoo explores the political and cultural history of these complex medical and social debates, examining how pain medicine emerged as a legitimate yet controversial field; how physicians, patients, politicians, and the courts have shaped ideas about pain and its relief; and how the question “who is in pain and how much relief do they deserve?” has become a microcosm of broader debates over disability, citizenship, liberalism, and conservatism in American society. Co-presented with History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series and the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life, UVA History of the Health Sciences Lecture
- Date:
- 2015-10-21
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- When academic medicine in the U.S. begins to reflect the remarkable diversity of the population it serves, we can potentially start narrowing critical gaps in cultural knowledge, the provision of health care, and the education and advancement of future physicians. Invoking the time-honored art of quilt-making as a metaphor, Dr. Wendi Wills El-Amin will engage the audience at this Medical Center Hour in exploring the urgent issue of minority diversity in academic medicine, including the opportunities that currently exist to craft new patterns and other opportunities we need to create in order to increase minority presence and engagement throughout academic medicine. UVA School of Medicine Associate Dean for Diversity Dr. Greg Townsend will offer a response. Co-presented with the Office for Diversity, School of Medicine A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2015-10-14
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Danny Quirk is a young artist specializing in photorealistic watercolors, painting what the camera cannot capture. Much of his work illustrates the intricacies of human anatomy. On canvas, he paints figures in classic poses (sometimes á la Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius) in striking chiaroscuro lighting. But, more dramatically, he also paints on living subjects, representing on the body's surface the anatomical structures that lie beneath. In this Medical Center Hour, Danny Quirk talks about "dissecting" with a paintbrush—and while he's talking, he'll complete an anatomical drawing on a student volunteer. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
- Date:
- 2015-10-07
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Columbine. Virginia Tech. Ft. Hood. Huntsville. Tucson. Aurora. Newtown. The Navy Yard. Charleston. Roseburg. Gun violence, including a relentless raft of mass shootings, is epidemic today in the U.S., threatening individual safety and public health and wellbeing. The grim tally for 2015, says the Washington Post, is 294 mass shootings in 274 days. Many shooters are said to have undiagnosed or undertreated mental illness in their background. How does psychopathology contribute to violent behavior, particularly involving firearms, over a person's life course and in the social environment? How accurate and useful are clinicians’ predictions of violence in their patients? What is an appropriate role for clinicians as “gun gatekeepers” and for mental health services generally, as part of a public-health solution to gun violence? This Medical Center Hour reviews research related to these urgent questions and explores implications for clinicians and other mental-health stakeholders. Co-presented with the Institute for Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy and the School of Law, UVA A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2015-09-30
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- In this Medical Center Hour, award-winning journalist Meera Subramanian explores the human and global health implications of India’s ravaged environmental landscape. Her new book, A River Runs Again: India's Natural World in Crisis, investigates five environmental crises by profiling ordinary people and micro-enterprises determined to guide India and its burgeoning population into a healthier future. An organic farmer revives dead land; villagers resuscitate a river run dry; cook-stove designers seek a smokeless fire; biologists bring vultures back from the brink of extinction; and, in one of India’s poorest states, a bold young woman teaches adolescent girls the fundamentals of sexual health. In these individual stories resides hope for a nation and its people and the potential for a sustainable and more prosperous world. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture/Exploring the Global South Co-presented with the Center for Global Health, Institute for the Humanities and Global Cultures (Global South Initiative), Department of Public Health Sciences, and Virginia Quarterly Review
- Date:
- 2015-09-23
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Southern Appalachia often provides a folksy backstory to our national mythology—a tale of coal miners, moonshining, bluegrass, and ballads. But Appalachia is a real place that figures fundamentally in this country's heritage and destiny. Its rugged mountains are rich in natural resources while its remote communities are home to some of the nation's most fiercely proud people and most persistent poverty. This region has endowed American culture—and the University of Virginia—with a wealth of gifts and innovations but itself faces staggering difficulties. Embracing Appalachia is challenging, especially now, as the coal industry disappears and crises of poor health, environmental degradation, and poverty deepen. This Medical Center Hour with West Virginia coalfields native David Gordon probes our particular connections to Appalachia and how the enduring tragedy of this place is a “canary in the coalmine” for the rest of our nation. Is "healthy Appalachia" possible? What will it take? What must we do? Co-presented with the Center for Global Health, Institute for the Humanities and Global Cultures (Global South Initiative), Department of Public Health Sciences, and Healthy Appalachia Institute
- Date:
- 2015-02-25
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Marijuana has had a rocky and peculiar history in the United States. The early history of marijuana prohibition is fairly well known, thanks in part to a classic work on the subject, The Marijuana Conviction, co-authored by Richard J. Bonnie while he was associate director of a commission apppointed by Richard Nixon. In 1972, to the surprise of many, the commission recommended decriminalizing marijuana use, but it also rejected the idea of legalization, expressing major concerns about the public health consequences of doing so. While loosening marijuana laws became a mainstream policy idea through the Ford and Carter admisistrations, in the Reagan White House, a policy of "zero tolerance" took hold and evolved into a new and costly war on all illegal drugs. Millions of marijuana arrests ensued. As the drug war's costs accumulated in the early 21st century, support for decriminalizing marijuana returned. Some states defied the federal government by legalizing medical use. Then, suddenly, in 2012, voter initiatives in Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana for recreational use and, in 2014, voters in Washington DC did the same, with legalization in the District due to take effect 26 February 2015. The worries raised by the commission in 1972 are back, complicated by the challenges of implementing the law. This Medical center hour's principal speaker, who has both chronicled this story and been a player in it for more than four decades, will reflect on why marijuana prohibition suddenly collapsed and on what should happen next. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Date:
- 2015-02-18
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- When documentary filmmaker Kathy Leichter moved back into her childhood home after her mother's suicide, she discovered a hidden box of audiotapes. Sixteen years passed before she had the courage to delve into this trove, but there she unearthed what her mother had recorded about every aspect of her life--from the joys and challenges of her marriage to a state senator to her son's estrangement , as well as the highs and lows of living with bipolar disorder. Here one day is Ms. Leichter's emotionally candid film about a woman coping with mental illness, her family relationships, and the ripple effects of her suicide on those she loved. In this Medical center hour, Ms. Leichter offers her extraordinary award-winning film, speaks about the transformative nature of story, and shows how Here one day is helping to dissolve mental health stigma and to educate and support persons and families in communities and educational institutions across the country.
- Date:
- 2015-02-11
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Fifty years ago President Lyndon B. Johnson envisioned a Great Society, an America free from poverty and racial injustice and full of equality of opportunity and social mobility for all. Many legislative planks of his Great society platform--civil and voting rights, educational opportunity, fair housing practices, urban planning, mass transit, and health care --represent what we today consider "social determinants of health." This Medical center hour with bioethicist Erika Blacksher reviews how Americans are faring today in relation to key aspirations of LBJ's Great Society, especially those that bear on health. Americans generally live shorter, less healthy lives than their counterparts in peer nations, and within the U.S. health varies dramatically among social and economic groups and from region to region. What ethical concerns are raised by significant health disparities? Are such disparities unjust, as many in public health assume? If so, what are our responsibilites, and what ethical limits might constrain our pursuit of a more equitable distribution of health? Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series and the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life
- Date:
- 2015-02-04
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Dying in America is very different now from half a century ago. Before World War II, death usually occurred at home, often with no medical intervention. But with the bioscientific and medical advances that began in the 1950's, death became medicalized. In hospitals, it became possible to extend life. Often, patients were cured who would otherwise have died, but many endured protracted deaths in which suffering from treatment was worse than suffering from their fatal illness. Through the last decades of the 20th century, the medical and legal professions, medical ethicists, and the public began to consider ways to limit treatment, even to hasten death. It became generally accepted that all patients have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment. Now, five U.S. states recognize physician-assisted suicide. In this Medical center hour, physician and former New England Journal of Medicine editor-in-chief Marcia Angell traces the history of these changes, then inquires into where we stand now on dying--and where we go from here. Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
- Date:
- 2015-01-21
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Andreas Vesalius, long hailed as "the father of modern anatomy," is slipping into oblivion. The likes of Gray's Anatomy (the book), Netter's Atlas, plasticized dissected bodies, and online visible human specimens having eclipsed his splendidly illustrated book, On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543), as our definitive anatomy text. Vesalius's recent 500th birthday anniversary gives us a chance not only to celebrate this Renaissance genius, but also to consider how his accomplishments in the study of human anatomy helped medicine to become "modern." Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
- Date:
- 2014-11-12
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals enjoy ever greater social acceptance and legal protection, transgender teens and young adults still face challenges on many fronts. Simply negotiating adolescence isn't easy, and gender identity issues can complicate matters. Health care for transgender youth is in transition, as the population becomes better understood. In this Medical Center Hour, a panel of pediatricians makes the case for increased cultural competency in medicine and society alike to help give transgender teens a safe medical home and help them to lead satisfying, successful lives.
- Date:
- 2014-11-06
- Main contributors:
- Park, Joo Won, 1980-, Bellona, Jon, Tfirn, Max, Kim, Seung-Hye, DeLuca, Erik, Fang, I-Jen, Trapp, Rachek Devorah, Warren, Kristina, Stine, Eli, Maguire, Ryand
- Summary:
- Toccata by Joo Won Park is a solo live electroacoustic piece for found objects and the SuperCollider program. Joo Won performs this piece by scratching, rubbing, tapping, and pushing the objects in different ways on a board with a contact microphone. What you hear is the sound of those objects being digitally processed. Every time you see him clicking on a laptop, you hear different effect combinations. In the pre-performance ritual, he mentally prepares himself to create a wide range of sounds in a nervous and hectic mood. The performance guide and the SuperCollider patch for Toccata can be found at www.joowonpark.net/Toccata.pdf smooth is piece written for the KYMA signal processing system and Wacom Tablet interface. Limited Aggregation, by Max Tfirn and Seung-Hye Kim, is a collaborative piece for percussion and computer that explores sounds that are found by hitting different percussion instruments and modified by live processing. Each composer in the collaboration composes new material and edits each other’s material on the fly. This blends the composers’ compositional styles. Each sound from the percussion and computer interacts with every other, creating larger sounds and richer textures. There are also moments where the component sounds are zoomed in on that creates a contest between the larger built sounds and the microscopic natural sounds. These microscopic zoomed sounds are products of analyzing the spectrum and taking certain characteristics of the sound and filtering out others. The changing length of the processed sounds also reinforces the small/microscopic and zoomed aspects. Within a Sand Dune, by Erik Deluca, scored for amplified percussion quartet with one player, involved a compositional system inspired by time listening to the breath of the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. The percussion quartet transduces the sounds of the dunes, and the composer’s experience listening to them. 37720, by Rachel Trapp, is a construction of found sound shaped through a process of unfolding telematic communication. Acoustic and inductive recordings of the composers’ simultaneous transit rituals are transformed and positioned in the performance space according to the composers’ shared sensibilities, creating an audible landscape of movement across time, space, and subjectivity. Look the Other Way, by Kristina Warren: “I explore what I call “found text.” First I compiled texts from several sources, including novels, poems, and newsreels. Then I digitally recorded myself singing- speaking them, and next used various means to obscure the words (e.g., recording to and from tape, intensive layering, etc). This serves to emphasize the sonic and de-emphasize the semantic qualities of the source texts. In performance, I modulate the resulting texture by way of live, semi-semantic vocal input. All this aims to re-consider both signification and authorship.” Touching, by Eli Stine, is an exploration of surface: surface sounds of different objects and the surface layer of musical structure. Sonic materials come exclusively from recordings of touching, leading to friction, leading to striking of surfaces and objects and their resultant resonances. The sounds of these objects meet and interact, but no interaction is more than skin deep. Hyperions, by Paul Turowski, is software that presents an interactive context for musical improvisation. While the performer is free to make specific choices about pitch, timing and activity level, their choices are recognized by the computer via microphone input and significantly affect the dynamic physics-based system. Chance- based factors, including the gradual advance of destructive agents, make the piece akin to a tower defense game and allow unique visual and sonic textures to emerge with each performance. Trans, by Ryan Maguire, is a real-time sonification of a computer transcription of a transalpine scene. The original auditory moment, amidst a herd of cows along a Swiss mountain pass awaiting an approaching thunderstorm, is transformed via machine/human listening and digital transmission. Through repeated transmutation the transience of this particular “found sound” is transpired. In general, all signals are transmodified, and transparency is only relative. The transitory can never be truly transfixed because, first, we have only its trace and, second, communication necessitates transduction wherein its substance is transmuted. Nevertheless, might transpersonal knowledge of such ephemerality facilitate transcendent experience and/or esthesic trance?
- Date:
- 2014-11-05
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- During the enlightenment, from 1765, the Habsburg Empire capital of Vienna underwent massive transformations in urban design and appearance, from the introduction of sewer systems and streetlights to urbanization of suburbs and construction of public facilities, including parks, all guided by principles we now consider fundamental to creating healthy, green, livable cities. Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (1780-1790), a reformer with almost utopian (and quite Jeffersonian) ideas about architecture and health, extended these massive changes by contructing Vienna's medical district, including the general hospital, the military hospital, an institute for the mentally ill, and the medical-surgical military academy Josephinum. What does it mean to "construct for health" in designing cities and landscapes, public and private spaces, and health care facilities? This Medical center hour examines the Vienna Project as an important design-and-health precedent. How might we in the twenty-first century enlist design professionals and health professionals together in more deliberate, collaborative efforts to improve public and personal health and well being? Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, the Center for Design + Health (School of Architecture), the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry (School of Nursing), and the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities (School of Medicine), as part of the interprofessional symposium “Constructing for Health: A Global Nod to Nightingale,” funded by the Buckner W. Clay Endowment for the Humanities (College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)
- Date:
- 2014-10-29
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Over the last decade, the number of reports urging American universities to expose their health professional students to interprofessional education (IPE), so that those who will practice together may learn together, has exceeded the number of actual IPE experiences in most nursing and medical students' entire curricula. In 2013, strong new calls for interprofessional education came from the Institute of Medicine and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. What does this mean for the University of Virginia's Schools of Nursing and Medicine, our students, our health systems, and the patients and families we serve? If we were to push the envelope on IPE, where might we best focus our efforts? How might we lead in preparing the next generation of nurses and physicians for better collaboration and team-based care? The Zula Mae Baber Bice Memorial Lecture, School of Nursing
- Date:
- 2014-10-22
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Adverse events and poor patient outcomes occur for all doctors, regardless of subspecialty, regardless of educational and training pedigree, and despite best intentions. Such occurrences often exact a significant and sometimes lasting emotional toll on doctors, even apart from any culpability or potential medicolegal ramifications. In this Medical center hour Dr. Farnaz Gazoni demonstrates that adverse events in clinical care and their impact on physicians have substantial, widespread repercussions affecting quality of care and patient safety. But her research and experience show too that, by simply cultivating awareness of this issue, health care institutions and individual practitioners are taking important first steps toward culture change. The Jessie Stewart Richardson Memorial Lecture, School of Medicine In observance of National Quality Week (19-25 October), and co-presented with the Patient Safety Committee, UVA Health System
- Date:
- 2014-10-15
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- "Germs have always traveled. the problem now is they can travel with the speed of a jet plane." So said physician and medical historian Howard Markel in recent days, commenting on the spread of Ebola outside West Africa. This Medical center hour takes stock of the rapidly evolving Ebola epidemic and the concomitant rise in global health security concerns. What is known of this unusual virus and the life-threatening hemorrhagic fever it triggers? How are sociopolitical and cultural conditions and healthcare infrastructural inadequacies in West Africia and elsewhere hindering medical and public health response? How are governmental and health care institutions in the U.S. responding as cases erupt outside West Africia? And, looking ahead, what are the prospects for vaccine development and fast-track clinical trials? A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture Co-presented with the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Center for Global Health
- Date:
- 2014-10-08
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- In this Medical center hour, prize-winning writer Leslie Jamison inquires into the phenomenon of empathy. It may be something more fraught then we often imagine it to be. Empathy isn't just an instinctive reaction but a more complicated blend of intuition and decision. And it's not neccessarily an unequivocal good. It can mislead. It can exhaust. Ms. Jamison draws on her experiences as a standardized patient, working with and observing student doctors getting "trained" in the practice of empathy, as well as her experiences as a journalist, inhabiting a vexed state of empathy for her subjects, to consider a variety of perspectives on what makes for good empathy and what good it can do. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2014-10-01
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- In summer 2013, UVA landscape architecture graduate students Harriett Jameson and Asa Eslocker travelled to Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda, California, three landscapes with the highest life expectancy in the world, to explore these places' physical, spatial, and material qualities-topography, plant communitites,urban form-and also the personal attachments that seniors in these sites have to their cultural landscapes. The people in these locales have long been studied for their genetics, diets, and recreation habits. But until Ms. Jameson and Mr. Eslocker arrived, no one had inquired into or demonstrated in these settings the critical role of place in healthy longevity. Through study of these distinctive landscapes and the personal stories of elderly residents, the pair arrived at insights that may help communities rethink and redesign public landscapes to cultivate a culture of health and well being that spans infancy through old age. In this Medical center hour, Ms. Jameson and Mr. Eslocker focus on how place contributes to healthy aging and preview parts of their full-length documentary film, Landscapes of longevity, which will premiere in Charlottesville in November. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture Co-presented with the Center for Design + Health, School of Architecture, UVA
- Date:
- 2014-09-24
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Growing enthusiasm in medicine and in the population at large for early diagnosis has engaged many doctors in a systematic search for abnormalitites in persons who are well. While physicians, patients, and the press tend to focus on the potential benefits, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch in his work has exposed the often-ignored harm associated with this practice: overdiagnosis. Diagnoses of a great many conditions, including high blood pressure, osteoporosis, diabetes (and prediabetes), and even cancer, have skyrocketed in recent years, yet many individuals so labeled are destined never to develop symptoms, much less die, from their conditions. They are overdiagnosed. And overdiagnosed patients as Dr. Welch points out in the Medical Center Hour, cannot benefit from treatment since there is nothing to fix. But they can be harmed. Understanding the trade-offs involved is critical, Dr. Welch argues, so that health care systems don't further narrow the definition of "normal" and, ironically, turn more and more well persons into patients. Co-presented with the Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine; the Sadie Lewis Webb Program in Health Law, School of Law; and the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life, UVA
- Date:
- 2014-09-17
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- Acclaimed physician-writer Christine Montross (Body of work, 2007; and Falling into the fire, 2013) discusses how diving deeply into her most challenging patient encounters has led her to the ancient concept of "abiding" as a lost tenet of patient care. A psychiatrist and medical educator, Dr. Montross speaks in defense of repugnance, and encourages physicians and doctors-in-training to acknowlege, rather than suppress the discomforts which naturally arise in the practice of medicine. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
- Date:
- 2014-09-10
- Main contributors:
- University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary:
- At a time of sweeping transitions in health care, medical students and young physicians are eager for guidance as to how best to apply their knowledge and skills in caring for patients. In clinical settings, and especially in primary care, who might be the best role models for young trainees to emulate? What skills and traits do the best clinicians use to create healing relationships with patients? How do clinicians become "healers" -that is, practitioners effective in making the patient-professional relationship itself have active therapeutic potential? Professor Larry Churchill and colleagues at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine have examined these matters, interviewing both clinicians and patients on the vital question of what actually makes for a therapeutic encounter, even in the context of a stressed and changing health care system. In this Medical Center Hour, Professor Churchill will present his studies' findings as a prelude to disscussion of the implications for medical ethics and medical education and for establishing truly "patient-centered" practices.
- Date:
- 2014-04-04
- Summary:
- The mission of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission is to guide the orderly growth and development of the City through the preparation and maintenance of a Comprehensive Plan; preparation of the City’s annual Capital Program and Budget based on this comprehensive plan; and recommending action on zoning legislation, code amendments, and regulations concerning the subdivision of land. Beginning in 2008, the Commission began work on its “Integrated Planning and Zoning Process.” It is composed of three interrelated components: zoning code reform, the preparation of a new citywide comprehensive plan, and the creation of the Citizens Planning Institute. In April 2013, the City Planning Commission was awarded the American Planning Association’s National Planning Excellence Award for a Best Practice for this work. This lecture will describe Philadelphia’s Integrated Planning and Zoning Process, including lessons learned.