- 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