An internationally renowned maternal-fetal medicine expert took the stage at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute’s Sam Walton Auditorium on March 5 to discuss the challenges and breakthroughs shaping women’s and infant health worldwide.

Alan T.N. Tita, M.D., Ph.D., who serves as the Mary Heersink Endowed Chair of Global Health and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), visited the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) to  present the College of Medicine’s Dean’s Distinguished Lecture, “Out of the Deep South: TRIALS, Tribulations, and Triumphs Advancing Global Women’s Health.”

Tita shared insights from decades of clinical research, including the landmark Chronic Hypertension and Pregnancy (CHAP) study he led that changed obstetric care guidelines for treating hypertension during pregnancy. UAMS participated in the large multicenter study of nearly 30,000 women, which received Trial of the Year awards from the  Society for Clinical Trials and the Clinical Research Forum following its publication in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2022.

Since 2009, Tita has served as principal investigator on obstetric studies supported by more than $100 million in total research funding.

During his lecture, Tita highlighted several additional clinical trials that have changed obstetric care guidelines, including research on preventing obstetric hemorrhage, reducing cesarean births through labor management strategies, and improving outcomes through better timing of delivery.

Tita was the invited guest of Paula Robertson, Ph.D., professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Biostatistics, who served on the CHAP trial’s data and safety monitoring board.

“Dr. Tita has devoted his life to improving the health of women and infants around the world. And his work is especially meaningful to us here in Arkansas, as we confront our own maternal health challenges,” said Robertson.

In her introduction, Roberson shared the origins of Tita’s journey.

Growing up in Cameroon, Africa, Tita witnessed firsthand the profound challenges women faced, particularly the tragic and preventable loss of young mothers to infection and complications of childbirth. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, maternal mortality rates can be more than 100 times higher than in high-income countries. Those disparities left a lasting impression.

As a young physician working in rural missionary hospitals alongside colleagues from around the world, he recognized that public health alongside clinical medicine could be a force multiplier. That early experience continues to shape his work today. He now co-leads the Cameroon Health Initiative, a partnership between UAB and Cameroon partners to improve health outcomes in his native country.

A scholarship took Tita from Cameroon to the United Kingdom for a Master of Public Health at the University of Leeds. He later came to the United States, completing his OB-GYN residency at Baylor College of Medicine and a Ph.D. in perinatal epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston.

Since then, Tita has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He has authored more than 400 scientific publications and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians.

Tita emphasized that progress is only possible through strong partnerships and well-supported research networks. Over nearly three decades, UAB has participated in the National Institutes of Health Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network, which he noted has contributed to roughly a quarter of the evidence guiding obstetric practice today.

“You may hear a lot of what I’ve done,” Tita told the audience. “But it’s not really about me. It’s about the opportunities I’ve had in this country and in the Deep South to work with amazing people and teams.”

Reflecting on his journey, Tita described how early exposure to maternal deaths and infectious diseases like HIV in South Africa cemented his purpose and commitment to improving women’s health.

“My inspiration was my mother, a nurse,” Tita said. “These memories continue to define my approach. It became clear to me that we had to do something, especially for young women.”

Tita noted that the United States continues to have the highest maternal mortality rates among high-income countries and stressed the need to address social determinants of health, chronic disease, and the growing number of rural “maternity deserts.”

He also encouraged students, trainees, and early-career faculty in attendance to pursue ambitious goals while building strong collaborative teams.

“Know and plan where you want to go and keep that vision in mind,” he said.

Tita closed the lecture with an African proverb that has guided his work and philosophy on collaboration and life: “If you want to go fast, go alone,” he said. “If you want to go far, go together.”

A recording of Dr. Tita’s lecture is available here.

UAMS College of Medicine student Catalina Terlea discovered the power of art to foster well-being while she was a busy and frequently stressed undergraduate. Now, she is leading a student initiative to help fellow medical students — and eventually patients — experience these benefits.

“I realized that students and patients could really benefit from having a space to engage in art creation to deal with the stress that life and being a student brings,” said Terlea, who is from Little Rock and majored in art and biology at Lyon College in Batesville.

The idea took shape in discussions last year with Tiffany Huitt, Ph.D., an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Neuroscience who teaches in the freshman Human Structure course and who, like Terlea, is an artist. “As we were brainstorming how to have a space available for students and patients to engage in art creation, I thought of the UAMS 12^th Street Health & Wellness Center, our student-led free clinic,” Terlea said. “For students and the community that the center serves, it can be incredibly hard to afford wellness therapy services and art supplies. We wanted to bridge that gap.”

Terlea worked with Huitt and another Human Structure teacher, assistant professor Erica Malone, Ph.D., along with then 12^th Street Center Director Melissa Halverson, Pharm.D., to plan and implement the pilot program. In the initial sessions, Terlea taught a therapeutic drawing and painting technique called neurographic art to student volunteers at center. In addition to creating art, volunteers were trained in how to conduct sessions for others.

Later, Terlea began leading pottery-making sessions at the center. “This is something I dreamed about with Dr. Huitt when we first envisioned the idea for art-based wellness sessions,” she said. “Being able to bring the tactile benefits that pottery-making offers to the expression and release of emotions for student wellness has been very rewarding.”

Tracy Haselow, M.D., an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and director of the UAMS Student Wellness Program, attends and provides guidance during the pottery sessions. The ongoing initiative is a collaboration with John Shea, MFA, and the University of Arkansas Little Rock Department of Fine Arts, which fires the pottery in its kilns.

“Our sessions are aimed at stress reduction, emotional awareness and being grounded,” Terlea said. “In our pilot study, we found measurable stress reduction for most of the volunteers who engaged in both the painting and pottery sessions. Most students showed a reduction in what is called state trait anxiety.”

“Additionally, our survey feedback showed that most of our student participants believed that expanding art-based wellness to patients would improve their wellbeing,” Terlea said.

Terlea and her team hope to put the theory into practice by eventually providing art wellness sessions for patients at the center. But the 12^th Street center isn’t the only hub of activity for the initiative.

Last August, College of Medicine leaders invited Terlea and six fellow volunteers to conduct a painting session for the entire incoming freshman class during orientation activities. “We used Catalina’s initiative to teach about wellness and as an opportunity for new medical students to practice managing their stress, as well as for community-building,” said Rebecca Latch, M.D., associate dean for student affairs.

In October, Terlea spoke about art and wellness and led a neurographic painting session for more than 30 educators at the Learning Communities Institute national conference hosted by UAMS. She also presented at the Society of Student Run Free Clinics annual conference in Chicago. Terlea’s work was well received, and she is now working on a scholarly article about the initiative with Huitt and Malone.

On the south edge of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Little Rock campus, a community is thriving with the help of College of Medicine faculty and medical students. 

A community of honeybees.

UAMS is home to two healthy hives through a “host-a-hive” partnership with a local apiary initiative that benefits both bees and people. The hives give the local bee population a boost, and educational activities raise awareness in the human community about the crucial work of bees.

The project was initiated by Andrew Morris, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology who holds the Mehta/Stebbins Chair in Cardiovascular Research and is a Research Career Scientist at the Central Arkansas Veterans Affairs Healthcare System (CAVHS). Morris connected UAMS with the local beekeeping community and Calm+Confidence founder and apiary manager Lauren Anderson. Medical students in the College of Medicine’s Tank Academic House were the first to get involved with the beekeeping endeavor as a community service project.

“Honeybees are critical pollinators to support reproduction of plants and trees as well as commercial crops, but this has been impacted by declines in bee populations,” Morris said. “Hosting hives at UAMS, where we have large areas of land, is something we can do to help.”

“Beekeeping is fascinating,” he said. “And learning to handle bees is good practice for remaining calm under stressful situations, which is certainly something medical students can benefit from.”

On a warm September evening, six students and Lindsey Sward, M.D., a Tank House faculty advisor, assistant dean for clinical education and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, joined Morris at the UAMS hives to inspect the bees and prepare for the first harvest of honey under Anderson’s guidance. Wearing protective veils, participants used a device called a smoker to harmlessly subdue the bees – as many as 50,000 in a hive – before opening the stacked hive boxes. Then they lifted rectangular frames from the boxes, revealing honeycomb laden with honey. 

“It was a lot different than I expected,” said fourth-year medical student and Tank House Leadership Committee member Blaire Taggart. “I didn’t expect the bees to be so docile.”

The following Saturday, several Tank House students and Morris joined Anderson for a “Honey Harvest” educational event at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center, located on 10^th Street south of campus. The air was thick with the sweet, floral scent of honey as excited children and their parents, along with other library and beekeeping community volunteers, helped extract honey from frames. Visitors learned about bees and honey production and compared the taste of honey from UAMS and the nearby Hillcrest neighborhood.

Morris was stationed at one of two cylindrical stainless steel “spinners” that extract honey from frames, leaving the honeycomb intact so it can be returned to the hive. Two frames holding honeycomb are placed inside the container, the lid is clasped shut, and a crank is turned to release the honey through centrifugal force.

“See how this works?” Morris asked as he encouraged 8-year-old Charlotte Sims and her 5-year-old brother, Aiden, to take turns spinning the crank as fast as they could. Morris opened the lid and lifted one of the frames of honeycomb, still heavy with honey.

“Whoa!” the siblings exclaimed in unison.

“This is yummy business,” declared Charlotte, licking fingers that had become sticky in the process.

College of Medicine senior Justin Stanley, who chairs the Tank House Community Service Committee, organized students for the hive inspection and the event at the library. During a pause from working with children, he explained how the COVID-19 pandemic had limited the ability to do in-person community outreach.

“During the pandemic, everything went virtual, so it was really hard to have events like this,” Stanley said. “Now that we’re on the other side of the pandemic, we are trying to do more community service activities. We knew this would be a great way to start the academic year. It is nice to work with the kids, and honeybees are so vital to our ecosystem and health in general.”

Karina Clemmons, Ed.D., a Tank House advisor, assistant dean for medical education and associate professor in the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, brought her 10-year-old son Julian to the library event. Weeks earlier, she had heard about the new UAMS project from Morris and helped Tank House student leaders connect and become involved.

“This is such a wonderful service project for UAMS and our students,” Clemmons said. “It supports people who live in this area directly by generating more bees to pollinate gardens. And Tank House students are serving as community educators, helping kids and families understand the importance of supporting a healthy bee community literally in their backyards.”

Long interested in beekeeping, Morris tapped into the Little Rock beekeeping community about a year and a half ago and hosts a hive at his house in Hillcrest. He said Anderson’s expertise has been indispensable in maintaining a healthy hive. Morris is also working with CAVHS to place hives at the Eugene J. Towbin VA Healthcare Center in North Little Rock.

The world of bees also meshes with Morris’ interests as a scientist. “Despite how important bees are, there is a huge amount about them that we don’t understand,” he said. “I have been tempted to do bee-related research.”

The two worlds are not without parallels. Some of Morris’ research has centered on how lipids – fats – affect heart disease. Bees don’t hibernate, he noted. They change their metabolism to store fat while wintering in the hive. Finding ways to switch fat storage on and off could have important implications for human health. 

At the end of the library event, Anderson weighed UAMS’ first harvest – 25 pounds of honey, which filled a five-gallon bucket. Through the partnership, half of the sweet harvest will go to UAMS.

Meanwhile, the bees will have another month or so to supplement the honey that was left in their hives, so they will have plenty to live on as they spend the winter keeping warm in their hive and get ready to start work again in the spring.