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News for BCM Faculty, May 2, 2019
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Baylor Medicine: An April 25 ribbon cutting marked the official opening of the Baylor Medicine – Family Medicine Clinic in Houston’s River Oaks area. Dr. Jim McDeavitt, senior vice president and dean of clinical affairs, Dr. Roger Zoorob, professor and chair of family & community medicine, and President Paul Klotman led the festivities at the new family medicine clinic, conveniently located at 3743 Westheimer Road at Weslayan. The 8,000 square foot facility has 14 exam rooms, onsite labs and diagnostics, with same-day and next-day appointments available. To schedule an appointment, please call (713) 798-7700.

Faculty Town Hall: President Paul Klotman presented the results of the faculty satisfaction survey to more than 200 faculty members Tuesday evening. The survey identified areas of strength at the College and responses were better overall than those of the Association of American Medical College’s cohort. However, there are opportunities for improvement, particularly in the areas of understanding requirements for promotion and leadership’s transparency about finances. Dr. Klotman will work with his leadership team, chairs, center directors and Faculty Senate leaders to develop action plans for several issues identified in the survey. See the full report of survey data and the results of faculty surveys since 2012 online. A video of the town hall will be available next week.

New Ranker: Newsweek has jumped into the competitive field of hospital rankings with its World’s Best Hospitals 2019 list. Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center is ranked best in Houston at No. 48 on the national list. The magazine says the No. 1 world’s best hospital is Mayo Clinic – Rochester. Partnering with global market research company Statista, Inc., and international health insurer GeoBlue, Newsweek developed the rankings from a survey of tens of thousands of doctors, hospital managers and other healthcare professionals.

Cost Ranking: U.S. News & World Report again named Baylor College of Medicine No. 1 for least expensive private medical school. Among the 10 private medical schools with the lowest tuition and fees in 2018-19, the average cost was $46,463; Baylor’s out-of-state cost was $32,823. With a U.S News research ranking of 22 and primary care ranking of 4, the College is also the highest ranked school on the list. Emory University is the next top tier private medical school listed, with tuition and fees of $51,198.

Faculty Kudos

image Dr. James Anton, clinical assistant professor, and Dr. Sandeep Markan, associate professor, have been appointed interim co-chairs for the Department of Anesthesiology. Dr. Anton will take the lead on issues related to the Faculty Group Practice and Dr. Markan will manage issues related to the Affiliated Medical Services practice at Ben Taub Hospital and the educational enterprise. They will jointly support faculty and programs at other affiliated hospitals. Both will serve on the Academic Council and be responsible for managing personnel, developing new programs and implementing key College initiatives. Dr. Maya Suresh will assist with the transition until her retirement June 30. Dr. Donald Donovan, chair of otolaryngology, will chair the search committee.

Dr. Jennifer Christner, dean of the School of Medicine, and her inter-institutional colleagues have been awarded an International Association of Medical Science Educators Educational Scholarship Grant for their project "Leadership Essentials in Undergraduate Medical Education and the Barriers to Implementation." The grant supports scholarship in medical education.

Dr. David Moore, professor of molecular & cellular biology, medicine and molecular & human genetics, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on nuclear hormone receptors that regulate metabolism and cancer. Dr. Moore, who holds the R.P. Doherty, Jr. Welch Chair in Science and is a faculty senator, is the ninth current faculty member at the College to be named to the NAS.

Dr. Christina Nance, assistant professor of pediatrics – pathology & immunology, has been invited to become the new director of the College’s Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies Center of Excellence, one of 74 based in national and international academic medical centers. Through FOCIS, researchers and clinicians share knowledge across traditional disease borders, and identify commonalities between treatments and therapies that are life changing for those with immune-mediated diseases.

Dr. Ourania Preventza, associate professor of surgery, participated in a debate with Dr. Murat Tuzcu, chair of the Heart Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, during the Heart Valve Society Annual Meeting in Sitges, Spain, earlier this month. The topic for this "Battle of the Giants" was "Redo surgical aortic valve replacement vs. percutaneous valve in valve: What the science says in 2019." Video of the debate is available online.

College Events

Evenings with Genetics: Dr. Lorraine Potocki, professor of molecular & human genetics, and Dr. Jordan Kemere, assistant professor of medicine, present "When everyone’s a friend: How teens with Williams syndrome can develop independence as adults." The public seminar starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, at the Children’s Museum of Houston. Admission is free but registration for this event is required.

Professionalism: Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, University of Utah-based botanist, speaks on the importance of teamwork and compassion from the patient’s point of view at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 9, in Room 201A, main Baylor, as part of the Professionalism Support Series. She sustained a life-threatening injury while conducting research in the Costa Rican rainforest canopy and has become a powerful speaker about the recovery experience.

Medical Ethics & Health Policy: Dr. Savitri Fedson, associate professor in the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, presents "Raising Consciousness? Minimally Conscious States, Brain Death and Our Growing Understanding of Disorders of Consciousness," 6:30 - 8 p.m. Thursday, May 9, at Damian’s Cucina Italiana. Register online to attend.

Faculty Opportunities

Curriculum Committee: The Medical School Curriculum Committee is soliciting nominations for three faculty member positions. Interested faculty members from all disciplines are encouraged to consider applying for this important leadership role by close of business Friday, May 10. The Curriculum Committee has the integrated institutional responsibility for the overall design, management and evaluation of a coherent and coordinated curriculum. For more information, please see Faculty Opportunities.

Faculty Resources

Mosaic Town Hall: Get an update on the Mosaic Project, including the status of the Concur travel and expense component and the launch of the human resources system, Success Factors, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, in Cullen Auditorium, main Baylor.

Educator Workshop: Learn a variety of ways to make your lectures learner-centered and interactive in "Large Group Teaching," 2 – 4 p.m. Friday, May 10, in Room M321. To attend, RSVP to the Office of Faculty Development.

Library Resources: The TMC Library now has a dedicated page on the intranet (and a link under Resources in the intranet’s purple footer) to keep users updated on resource access issues. Current announcements include “Google Scholar offline,” “American Journal of Gastroenterology pre-2015 article access suspended” and “1999-2014 article access removed by Mary Ann Liebert.” This information is made possible by the Faculty Senate Administrative Operations Committee, the Office of the Provost and the TMC Library.

For a Good Cause

Bladder Cancer: Join the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network Walk to End Bladder Cancer at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, May 19, in Terry Hershey Park. Sign up and support the team online.

Charity Bowl: The College’s annual Charity Bowling Ball benefitting H.O.M.E.S. Clinic starts at 7 p.m. Friday, May 24, at the University of Houston Games Room. Register your team online.


Attention Clinicians: See Clinical Events

Clinical Seminars

Surgery Grand Rounds: The first week of Chief Resident Presentations features Dr. Jennifer Carpenter, Dr. Meredith Mason and Dr. Vivek Patel at 7 a.m. Wednesday, May 8, in Room N315, main Baylor or via Zoom, meeting I.D. 517 471 817.

Sex Trafficking: The American Medical Women’s Association and Physicians Against the Trafficking of Humans offer “Learn to Identify & Fight Trafficking,” a free CME-accredited curriculum to give healthcare workers in-depth training in recognizing the signs of sex trafficking and referring patients to trustworthy local resources, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., Saturday, May 11, in Room M112, main Baylor. Register online to attend.

Cardiac Surgery: The BCM Igor F. Palacios, MD, Distinguished Lectureship and Texas Heart Institute Honors Summit in Cardiology covers the history and future of cardiac surgery, current strategies in advanced heart failure, different approaches to peripheral interventions, debate between medical management and coronary intervention and the optimal management of adult congenital heart disease. The symposium is set for 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, May 17, at the Denton A. Cooley Auditorium, Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center – TMC. To register, go online.

Clinical Note

Physician Sunshine Act: Since 2013, the Physician Payment Sunshine Act has required applicable manufacturers ("industry") to report certain payments made to physicians (including fellows). Physicians have until May 15 to review and dispute industry payments that will be available publicly on the Open Payments Database on June 30. Baylor physicians are encouraged to review the payments reported under their name for calendar year 2018 to verify that it is accurate. For information on how to view and dispute records, see the Physician Sunshine Act on the Compliance intranet page.


Attention Researchers: See Research Calendar

Research Seminars

Drug Discovery: The Innovative Drug Discovery and Development Consortium (formerly Chemical Genomics) invites you to the kick-off of a new Gulf Coast Consortia program and focus on supporting therapeutics advancement. Featured speakers include Dr. Michelle Arkin, professor at University of California, San Francisco and president of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, and Dr. Lynn Johnson Langer, executive dean of academic programs at Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at the NIH, as well as industry experts. The mini-symposium starts at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 7, in the auditorium of the Bioscience Research Collaborative. Register online.

DLDCCC Seminar: Dr. Andy Minn, associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses gene programs and signaling pathways discovered through unbiased high-dimensional data analysis that regulate cancer metastasis and its resistance to either conventional treatment or immune therapies at noon Tuesday, May 7, in Room N315, main Baylor.

ICTR Seminar: Dr. Eric Polley of the Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Department of Health Sciences Research at Mayo Clinic presents “Associations between germline variants from multigene cancer panel testing and cancers” at 11 a.m. Wednesday, May 8, in Room 187A, main Baylor. The seminar is hosted by Dr. Chris Amos, director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

Cancer Research: "Cell-based Immunotherapy for Cancer" is the topic of a lecture by Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief of the surgery branch and senior investigator of the Head Tumor Immunology Section at NCI’s Center for Cancer Research, 3 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, Cullen Auditorium, main Baylor. The lecture is sponsored by the Diana Helis Henry and Adrienne Helis Malvin Medical Research Foundations.

Research Resources

The Brain Research Foundation's 2020 Scientific Innovations Award will accept one institutional nomination from the College to support neuroscience projects that may be too innovative and speculative for traditional funding sources, but still have a high likelihood of producing important findings. Associate professors and professors are eligible to compete for the two-year, $150,000 grant. Submit your letter of intent, along with an NIH biosketch, research summary and letter of nomination to the BCM online submission portal by midnight Monday, May 6.

From the Labs: Read how a comprehensive view of colon cancer opens new avenues for research in this blog post about research by Dr. Bing Zhang, professor of molecular and human genetics and the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center. Receive From the Labs via email by entering your email address in the box at the end of any article and clicking the "subscribe" button.


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