All-faculty meeting and the Dean's State of the School address: Sept 15, 4:30 pm, Old Library Auditorium
The School of Medicine annual all-faculty meeting and State of the School address this year are expanded to include honoring faculty members/teams that made exceptional contributions to the School last year and to highlight new initiatives and accomplishments. All available primary faculty are invited.
Irene Barhyte named Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration
Irene Barhyte has been named Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration in the School of Medicine. This position has been newly defined and expanded to include responsibility and oversight both for the finances of the School of Medicine and the Faculty Practice Plan. Previously – before the integration of the OHSU Medical Group into the School of Medicine as the new Faculty Practice Plan on January 1, 2009 – these responsibilities were carried out in two separate positions.
Dean Mark Richardson and the Faculty Practice Plan Management Committee enthusiastically recommended Irene for the newly integrated position, which she has filled since April on an interim basis. "In recognition of Irene's exceptional performance over these past several months – especially during what has been a challenging budget year due to the global economic crisis – I am pleased to appoint her to this position. She is a real asset to the School of Medicine and to the Faculty Practice Plan," said Dean Richardson. "Irene understands the big picture perspective of our complex institution and is also sensitive to the needs of each department, regardless of size and budget."
Irene has been at OHSU since 1997. In her most recent position as OHSU Assistant Comptroller, Irene was responsible for overseeing many aspects of Central Financial Services (CFS). She has a deep knowledge of OHSU's organization and financial systems. She was involved in planning for and implementing the integration of OHSU Medical Group into the School of Medicine as the new Faculty Practice Plan, and has been involved in special projects related to research administration. She is a CPA and Certified Treasury Professional, previously worked with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a big-six accounting firm, and is a graduate of Oregon State University.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov, PhD, and team develop gene therapy method to prevent some inherited diseases
Researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) believe they have developed one of the first forms of genetic therapy – a therapy aimed at preventing serious diseases in unborn
children. Specifically, the therapy would combat inherited diseases passed on from mothers to their children through mutated DNA in cell mitochondria. The research is published in the Aug. 26 advance online edition of the journal Nature and will appear in a print edition of the journal at a later date.
"We believe this discovery in nonhuman primates can rapidly be translated into human therapies aimed at preventing inherited disorders passed from mothers to their children through the mitochondrial DNA, such as certain forms of cancer, diabetes, infertility, myopathies and neurodegenerative diseases," explained Shoukhrat Mitalipov, PhD, an associate scientist in the Division of Reproductive Sciences at ONPRC, the Oregon Stem Cell Center and the School of Medicine Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Molecular & Medical Genetics. "Currently there are 150 known diseases caused by mutations of the mitochondrial DNA, and approximately 1 out of every 200 children is born with mitochondrial mutations."
To read the complete OHSU media release, click here. To check out a sampling of the worldwide media coverage, read the BBC article here.. 309 local, national and worldwide media stories and counting.
Welcome new MD students: by the numbers
120: total class size
- 73%: Oregon residents
- 12%: born in another country
- 61: women
- 26: average age
- 21 to 47: age range
- 78: number of undergrad colleges represented
- 37%: biology majors
- 18%: biochemistry, molecular biology or neuroscience majors
- 37: other majors (including sciences, humanities, social science and the arts)
- 120: unique paths that led to OHSU medical school
- 3: the number of paths described below in their words
Welcome new MD students: three stories
For photos, video and local television coverage of the White Coat Ceremony, visit the School's facebook page: click here.
A tug of war between an ambition to become a writer and a desire to apply an interest in science in a hands-on way.
For Nathan Garton, 26, of Grants Pass, the decision to become a physician crystallized when he worked as a hospice volunteer interviewing terminally ill patients and chronicling the story of their lives for the benefit of both the patients and their families. In that process, he also learned about the medical histories that brought people to their final chapters.
"I'm interested in stories, and to me that's a lot of what being a doctor is about, asking the story of a person's body and trying to find out the specific events that led them to you. Writing those stories was where it all kind of clicked for me."
That decision resolved something of a tug of war between an ambition to become a writer and a desire to apply his interest in science in a hands-on way. Garton spent his last three undergraduate years at Bennington College in Vermont, a famous breeding ground for writers, graduating with a double major in English and Physics. During summers, he was an intern at Tin House, the Portland-based literary magazine. But he was drawn to science by a fascination with the saga of his great uncle, a nuclear physicist, who sought to work out a proof knocking a chink in Bell's theorem of quantum mechanics. Garton inherited the unfinished proof when his great uncle died and grappled with it in producing his senior thesis at Bennington.
While engaged in post-baccalaureate pre-med studies at Portland State University, Garton helped expand and refine the "Defining Moments" story keepers 
program at Adventist and also volunteered in an OHSU emergency medicine department program for students, which exposed him to the contrast between the achingly slow rhythms of a hospice and the often super-frenetic pace of an emergency room. Garton already is giving some thought to his professional career beyond medical school. "I'm really interested in primary care in a rural setting on the Oregon coast where my grandparents live, an area that's absurdly barren when it comes to doctors." But he also confesses to a great interest in neurology and mapping neuro pathways.
The daughter of the only bovine veterinarian in southern Tillamook county, Jenna assisted her father on rounds.
Jenna Emerson, 23, begins her studies at OHSU with a clear-eyed perspective on the health care needs of rural populations in Oregon as well as in the "pretty drastic environment" of poverty stricken countries like Guatemala where she was a health care aide for a year after college. The daughter of the only bovine veterinarian in southern Tillamook county where dairy farming is the leading industry, Emerson attended Nestucca High School in Cloverdale (pop. 249) then went on to major in biology at Carroll College in Montana.
As a youth she assisted her father on his rounds and during surgeries. In college she worked in a veterinary clinic. But she transferred her focus to human health when she became aware of the plight of an increasing number of immigrant agricultural workers in Tillamook County. That commitment deepened in Guatemala where she found herself doing post-operational stitching and supporting appendectomies in the poorly equipped, understaffed National Hospital. She also worked for Faith in Practice, an American non-governmental organization that sends health care teams to remote Guatemalan villages.
Maliheh's other passion is soccer, which she concedes virtually ruled her life for a time.
Maliheh Nakhai, 26, who was raised in Eugene and graduated from South Eugene High School, knew early on what she wanted to do. She had an inkling she might want a career in science after her 
elementary school class dissected a frog because, despite an initial squeamishness, she found herself totally enthralled. By the time she was a high school freshman Nakhai was pretty sure of what she wanted to do even though she wasn't certain what it would entail. She set about finding out by participating in Health Occupations Students of America all through high school and volunteering as a certified nursing assistant at Eugene's Sacred Heart Medical Center. She majored in biology at Mills College in California and after graduating in 2006 she moved to Ashland, Ore., where she worked for three years as a research coordinator at the Clinical Research Institute of Southern Oregon.
She did volunteer work with La Clinica del Valle, which provides health care services to low-income, uninsured and underserved communities at three centers in Jackson county, Oregon. Nakhai's other passion is soccer, which she concedes virtually ruled her life for a time. She was captain of the women's soccer team at Mills and the junior varsity team in high school. And she is looking, at least at this point, toward the possibility of combining her passions by specializing in sports medicine or orthopaedics. She also is keen on providing medical care in some way to traditionally underserved populations.
Congratulations! Physician Assistant Program graduates 13th class
The OHSU Physician Assistant Program graduated its 13th class on Saturday, August 15. The program graduated 36 students of which two-thirds plan to stay in Oregon to practice. At the time of graduation one third of the class was already employed – about half in primary care. "These new physician assistants are a very important element of Oregon's health care future, and will provide significant new access to primary care," said Dean Mark Richardson.
The commencement address was delivered by Bill Leinweber, Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. Mr. Leinweber spoke to the students about being an advocate for both their profession and their patients and the role that PAs can play in health care reform.
Awards were presented to students and faculty. Graduates Ian Penner and Casey Evans were presented with the award for Academic Achievement while Christina Joseph was recognized for Excellence in the Clinical Year and Kristin Dunlap was given an award citing her professionalism. Pat Kenney-Moore, MS, PA-C, and Greg Larsen, MD, of OHSU, received the Excellence in Teaching in the Academic Year award. Charles Versteeg, MD, of Southern Oregon Orthopedics in Medford and Jana Van Amburg, MD, of Advanced Specialty General Surgery in Bend, received the Excellence in Clinical Teaching award. The day culminated with a reception of family and friends.
From the archives: On the eve of World War II
David W.E. Baird, MD (left), and Howard P. Lewis, MD (right), both towering figures in the history of the medical school during the first and middle parts of the 20th century, chat quietly in the Old Library.
At first glance, this image seems to capture a normal tête-a-tête between the dean and his chief of medicine. But on the back, written in pencil, is the small notation that radically alters the way we look at and interpret this photo: July 10, 1942 / Taken night of activation of 46th General Hospital
The 46th General was the all-volunteer unit based out of the University of Oregon Medical School which operated overseas, in Africa and Europe, during World War II. In command was 57-year-old urologist Col. J. Guy Strohm, who had served as division surgeon with the 91st in World War I.
The forty-year-old Lewis would soon leave for Army duty, first as assistant chief of the medical service at Halloran General Hospital in Staten Island, and then as chief at Rhoads Hospital in Utica, New York.
The forty-four year-old Baird would continue to lead the school through the war years, overseeing a faculty depleted by military call-ups and a curriculum accelerated to produce new physicians as quickly as possible.
Contributed by Sara Piasecki, Head, OHSU Historical Collections & Archives.
Out of the O.R. and into virtual reality
ACS accredits OHSU surgical simulation – one of 40 in nation
In 2006, the OHSU surgical simulation program squeezed itself, elbow-to-elbow, into a small, cramped space and had only basic old-school equipment. Today, just three years later, it's housed in a 
remodeled 1,200-square foot space in the Old Library with state-of-the-art, high fidelity "virtual reality" simulators that allow residents to practice colonoscopies, bronchoscopies and many other surgical procedures on adult and pediatric models.
"Simulation is a key part of surgical education and today's amazing technology helps move beyond the historical paradigm of learning by random opportunity," said Donn Spight, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, and Medical Director of VirtuOHSU. "It moves surgical education outside of the O.R."
VirtuOHSU recently earned accreditation from the American College of Surgeons, one of only 40 such programs to receive this national recognition. With 89 residents, the OHSU surgical residency program is the second largest in the country.
John Hunter, MD, Professor and Chair, Department of Surgery, is leading an effort to coordinate and expand simulation programs across the institution for both students and practicing health care professionals. Dr. Hunter is chairing the newly charged OHSU Simulation Governance Board – composed of OHSU faculty from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Dentistry, the OHSU Hospital and community members from Intel, among others. Securing philanthropic support for a comprehensive simulation center is part of the OHSU Foundation's $100 million Faculty Fundraising Initiative.
The residency experience of Dr. Spight, who specializes in minimally invasive surgery, shows the enormous educational potential of increasingly sophisticated simulation technology. "I trained in the classic environment — the attending and the chief resident would be doing a laparoscopic operation," he remembered, "and the attending might think of me and say, 'Hey, call Donn to the OR,' and upon my arrival he would say 'We're going to teach you to sew — right now.' Your heart starts pounding and your sphincter tone gets high, everyone's watching, and the attending says, 'Step up!"
Read an article about the VirtuOHSU in the 2009 Bridges Magazine here.
David Dorr, MD, at White House to discuss primary care
David Dorr, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, participated in a White House roundtable on health care reform on August 10. Led by President Obama's Health Reform "Czar" Nancy-Ann DeParle, the group was called together to report on the potential of medical homes to enhance primary care delivery.
Dr. Dorr, pictured left, presented information to the group about the Care Management Plus (CMP) model. The CMP model embeds a care manager/coordinator with a redesigned Health IT/electronic medical records infrastructure to support care coordination. Led by Dr. Dorr, the CMP model was piloted over a six-year period at Intermountain Healthcare with 4,700 patients and 72 doctors at seven primary care clinics. The focus was a patient population of at-risk older adults with complex chronic illnesses.
The pilot demonstrated the role of CMP in increasing satisfaction and productivity of primary care staff, improving mortality rates, and reducing unnecessary hospital admissions, especially re-hospitalizations. Currently, the model is being disseminated to 75 clinical teams across the country from OHSU. In addition to Dr. Dorr's presentation, the White House staff heard from representatives from state Medicaid plans, other health plans, integrated delivery systems and physician societies. You can read more about CMP in the January 2009 School of Medicine Dean's newsletter (click here).
OHSU study shows decline in maternity care workforce due to malpractice insurance
A study led by Ariel Smits, MD, MPH, Department of Family Medicine, shows that Oregon continues to lose maternity care providers. Information drawn from the study abstract describes how the team surveyed all obstetrical care providers in Oregon in 2002 and 2006. Survey data, supplemented with state administrative data, were analyzed for changes in provision of maternity care and reasons for stopping maternity care.
Results show that only 36.6 percent of responding clinicians qualified to deliver babies were actually providing maternity care in Oregon in 2006, significantly lower than the proportion (47.8 percent) found in 2002. Cost of malpractice premiums remains the most frequently cited reason for stopping maternity care, followed by lifestyle issues.
A goal of the study was to examine how Oregon's rural liability subsidy is affecting rural maternity care providers' ability to provide maternity care services. Most providers receiving the subsidy reported that it was very important to their continued provision of maternity care. However, statistical analysis found that the subsidy alone was not effective at keeping maternity care providers delivering babies. Call support, practice coverage and increased reimbursement should also be considered.
The study was funded by a grant from the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Oregon Medical Association, and OHSU Family Medicine Research Division. For additional information, contact Dr. Smits or John Saultz, MD, Chair, Department of Family Medicine. The full paper is in the August issue of Health Services Research.
Discovery Spotlight: "K" awards jump from five to sixty-five
Since the early days of federal research funding, PhD researchers have outnumbered those with MD degrees. A flow of physicians out of academic medical centers and into private practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s widened the disparity, severing the ties between the departing clinicians and their grant-eligible research environment. "Translational research, which extends discovery to the patient, should inherently include physicians as researchers and innovators. The NIH "K" Awards system is an attempt to redress this imbalance," said Cynthia Morris, PhD, MPH, Vice Chair of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Professor of Medicine, Public Health and Preventative Medicine. "K awards offer ten to fifteen programs to facilitate and improve the career development of early clinician investigators, and attract them into the investigator environment." As part of the award, training is provided in the basic sciences and in clinical translational science.
"In 2001, we had fewer than five awards," said Dr. Morris. "Now, OHSU and the VA have at least 65 mentored career development awards between them."
Robert O'Rourke, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Surgery and Co-Director of the department's Bariatric Surgery Program, is one of OHSU's K awardees. "Most of my clinical practice involves the use of surgery in the treatment of morbid obesity," he said. "There's no doubt that surgical techniques are effective, but there is also a huge need for research to help us better understand and address the underlying long term causes and effects of obesity."
Nine months into his five-year award, Dr. O'Rourke is focusing on the role of inflammation in mitigating some of the diseases regularly associated with obesity. "We know that diseases such as diabetes and artherosclerosis in obese patients are significantly related to underlying chronic systemic inflammation in those patients," he said. "My research is dedicated to finding molecular and cellular hooks that will allow us to intervene and apply non-surgical techniques to the treatment of obesity-related diseases."
OHSU's program for early research scholars in clinical and translational science in the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute is designed to support applicants and awardees at every stage.
"This kind of support is a critical ingredient in successful applicants becoming successful investigators," said Dr. Morris. Dr. O'Rourke agreed. "Without the support of OCTRI, my department chair Dr. Hunter, and my mentor, Dr. Dan Marks, my chances of taking this work to the NIH's R01 funding level would be greatly reduced. My patients are also a major part of this collaboration. With their consent, we use tissue samples from clinical surgical procedures to test in the research lab. Their participation in this way allows us to expand our avenues of enquiry many times over."
"This is an important OHSU pipeline for new investigators and getting people through the K phase and into the next, independent investigator phase -- in other words getting these junior people into the RO1 or VA merit review grant category," said Eric Orwoll, MD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Associate Dean for Clinical Research and Director of OCTRI, "and we're working on methods to make that even more successful."
Pictured above: Dr. O'Rourke
Honors, appointments and announcements
Evelyn Ford, MD-MPH candidate, receives Fogarty Award
Evelyn Ford, a MD-MPH candidate at OHSU, is one of nearly 100 top graduate students and post-doctoral trainees from the United States and 19 nations selected to train in global health research in low- and middle-income countries. The program, supported by the Fogarty International Center, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and 15 other components of the National Institutes of Health, is administered by Vanderbilt University's Institute for Global Health and the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Evelyn will investigate causes of maternal morbidity and mortality and contribute to HIV surveillance program design in Dhaka, Bangladesh at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research in Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) under the mentorship of Alejandro Cravioto, MD, PhD and Laura Reichenbach, PhD, ICDDR,B.
Pictured at right: Evelyn Ford and Dr. Fauzia Huda attend the FICRS orientation at National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC
Brian Fennerty, MD, is ASGE president-elect
M. Brian Fennerty, MD, FASGE, Professor of Medicine, is president-elect of the the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE). Dr. Fennerty assumed his duties on May 31 during the society's Digestive Disease Week in Chicago. His term as president-elect continues through May 2010, to be followed by his term as ASGE president. Dr. Fennerty is a fellow of the ASGE, the American College of Gastroenterology and the American Gastroenterological Association. He is a past member and current consultant of the FDA Advisory Panel on Gastrointestinal and Urological Devices. He is also a member of the Gastroenterology Committee for the American Board of Internal Medicine.
APOM resident receives FAER Research Fellowship Grant
Stacy Fairbanks, MD, a resident in the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine (APOM) has been awarded a Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) Research Fellowship Grant (RFG).
One of only three RFGs in the country, Dr. Fairbanks' project, "Mechanisms of Sex Differences in Neuronal Survival," explores the role of the enzyme sEH in the difference in brain cell death after stroke between men and women. Elucidating sex specific mechanisms of brain injury after stroke may allow the development of sex-tailored and more effective therapies against stroke injury for both men and women. Dr. Fairbanks is being mentored on this project by APOM Professor Nabil Alkayed, MD, PhD.
Pictured: Nabil Alkayed, MD, PhD, and Stacy Fairbanks, MD
OHSU hosts interns through NIH program, ARRA funding
The NIH Summer Research Experience program uses American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding to pair local educators and students with individual faculty members for a hands-on experience in laboratories where breakthrough research is taking place. More than 3,000 high school and college students and high school teachers are expected to participate in this program with faculty on university campuses around the country. Project titles and principal investigators in the School of Medicine who received ARRA awards for this purpose are:
- John Brigande, PhD, Associate Professor, Otolaryngology and Cell & Developmental Biology
- William Fleming, MD, PhD, Professor, Medicine and Cell & Developmental Biology
- William Hersh, MD, Professor and Chair, Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology
- Mary Stenzel-Poore, PhD, Professor and interim Chair, Molecular Microbiology & Immunology
PA class donates $1,000 to low/no-income clinic
The OHSU Physician Assistant Class of 2010 recently made a financial donation of $1,000 to Portland's Old Town Clinic, which provides compassionate and quality health care on a sliding fee scale to low-income and homeless people. The class's fundraising efforts, which included raffle and other events, have been aimed at giving back to the community and supporting worthy causes. In deciding where to donate their funds, students wanted to support a cause that embodied their goals for health care: serving the community and sustaining affordable access. Old Town Clinic has also acknowledged the value of making physician assistants integral members of the health care team by employing PAs and contributing to PA education through both didactic and clinical opportunities. The OHSU Class of 2010 believes that these policies are key elements in working toward a solution to our nation's health care crisis and were honored to make the donation to such a facility.
Welcome to our new faculty members
A warm welcome to our newest faculty members: this list is located here: www.ohsu.edu/som, or click here.
