By Spencer Watson

The Head Start/Early Head Start Program in Pulaski County, which has been administered by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Department of Pediatrics since 1998, has received a grant of $41 million from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The grant will be used to operate the program and is structured to provide $8.2 million a year for five years. Head Start/Early Head Start is a federally funded program designed to increase school readiness of low-income children.

The Pulaski County Head Start/Early Head Start Program serves more than 700 students age 6 weeks to 5 years and their families through both center-based and home-based programs across the county.

“Being chosen for this grant award in an open competition is very gratifying and proof of the good work this program has been doing for 20 years,” said Eduardo Ochoa, M.D., section chief of community pediatrics and an associate professor of pediatrics in the UAMS College of Medicine.

Ochoa said he was particularly pleased to have a variety of agencies partnered with the program submit support for the UAMS Head Start grant application.

“It just shows the value of the partnerships we’ve made all over the county and how important it is to serve the families we do,” he said.

The grant will allow some changes to the program’s design and management including:

• Increasing both the number of children served in Early Head Start and in home-based services, with an emphasis on serving pregnant women and a particular focus on teen moms and a growing Latino community;
• Centralization of services and consolidation of centers from 12 facilities to 9; collaborating with University of Arkansas – Pulaski Technical College both as a hub location, serving up to 249 children and housing the program’s administrative office, and using the college’s resources and staff in addition to those of UAMS;
• Strengthening teacher performance by using the Shine Early Learning Teacher Success Rubric as part of the program’s coaching and professional development plan; and
• Hiring two deputy directors to focus on providing quality services, full enrollment and program management.

“We are so grateful UAMS can continue serving the community with this comprehensive program, which is so needed,” said Tyra Larkin, director of the UAMS Head Start program. “We want to be the best program we can by focusing on closing the achievement gap for at-risk children and delivering high-quality services to families.”

Under the administration of the Department of Pediatrics in the UAMS College of Medicine, the program in Pulaski County offers more than traditional Head Start programs. Children and their parents also have access to health, nutrition, dental, disabilities, oral health and mental health services from UAMS and other providers. The program also provides service learning opportunities for students in the UAMS colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Health Professions and Public Health.

By Benjamin Waldrum

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has received a $100,000 gift from the estate of Ambrose T. Walker Jr., M.D. to enhance the A.T. and Gladys Walker Memorial Scholarship in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“We are profoundly grateful for the enduring generosity of the late Dr. Walker and his family,” said Christopher T. Westfall, M.D., FACS, executive vice chancellor of UAMS and dean of the college. “Scholarships make all the difference in easing the burden of medical school debt while helping us recruit the very best students. Many outstanding physicians have benefited from the A.T. and Gladys Walker Memorial Scholarship over the past 25 years, and this new gift will help make medical school possible for countless more.”

The scholarship, awarded to a medical student with financial need and moral character, was established in 1994 in memory of Walker’s parents, with an initial gift of $30,000.

Walker was a 1946 College of Medicine graduate. He was a family practitioner in Thayer, Missouri before retiring to Springfield, Missouri. He passed away in 2018.

His mother, Gladys McKamie, taught school in a small rural community near the Red River in Texarkana. A.T. Walker was a salesman and worked for a family-owned wholesale grocery company in Stamps, Arkansas. “My parents were very supportive of me,” Walker said when the initial gift was established. “They helped me financially the best they could and encouraged me in every way. One of the happiest moments was when I received my M.D. degree. They were proud of me and I am proud of them.”

Walker was the eldest of three sons. As a child, he witnessed his brother, Jimmy, die of meningitis within a 24-hour period, and soon after, his youngest brother, Billy, became gravely ill. Although the family traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana to get Billy the best available medical treatment, he died of leukemia. These deaths affected Walker greatly.

Although Walker attended college on a musical scholarship, he switched his studies to pre-med and completed his medical degree in three years. After interning at Lutheran Hospital in Cleveland, he was assigned to the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, for six months. Thereafter his postwar duties took him to the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, where he served for two years.

Upon his honorable discharge from the Navy, Walker served an obstetrics/gynecology residency at St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock before beginning his general practice in Mammoth Springs, Arkansas, and then in Thayer, where he practiced for 40 years.

“There was no one like him – he was so caring about his patients,” said his wife, Carol. “What Ambrose wanted to do was serve people who needed medical attention, who may or may not have been able to afford it. He accepted people for who they were and valued them, and they knew it. I hope this scholarship can help students to focus less on making money in their careers and more on really caring about people.”

The College of Medicine has educated and trained more than 10,000 physicians since 1879, and has an annual enrollment of nearly 700 students. It is regularly listed in the top 10 nationwide for the percentage of its graduating class that pursue a career in family medicine. More than half of the practicing physicians in Arkansas are UAMS graduates.

More than two-thirds of Arkansas’ 75 counties include federally designated Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas. Primary care physician shortages are projected to increase substantially as the state’s population continues to age and require more medical care, and as more Arkansans seek primary care services.

The high cost of medical school and the burden of educational debt that most medical students face when entering their postgraduate residency training can be a factor in choosing higher-paying specialties instead of primary care and practicing in rural areas. The average medical school debt of recent UAMS graduates who have educational debt is about $190,000.

Tourist attractions are the usual highlights on a bus tour, but Becca Perin, M.D., had different sights on the itinerary for more than two dozen new UAMS pediatric interns this summer. Each stop was planned to help them provide the best possible care for some of Arkansas’ most vulnerable children.

“The bus tour was a way to show our brand new interns, who are just beginning their training to become pediatricians, some of the many things that impact a child’s health,” said Perin, an assistant professor in the General Pediatrics Section of the Department of Pediatrics who serves as an associate director of the Pediatrics Residency Program.

“The medical care we provide in clinic at Arkansas Children’s Hospital is just one small element of taking care of a child,” she said. “Social determinants of health are extremely important, and we wanted to show our interns what it means, for example, to have food insecurity and live in a food desert with limited access to nutritious, affordable food, and what it is like to have housing insecurity.”

The June 20 tour introduced the interns to many community organizations that serve low-income families and children with special needs, such as the Immerse Center, which supports children aging out of foster care and other youths in crisis.

“For many families in need, their child’s pediatrician may be their only access point for learning about community resources, and they look to their pediatrician for help in navigating those resources,” said Perin, who modeled the bus tour partly on an innovative program at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The interns also learned about the role of Central High School in the integration of public schools and the Civil Rights Movement, and explored African American history and culture at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

An internship is the first year of residency training for medical school graduates. A pediatrics residency is three years, and many graduates continue their training with a fellowship in a subspecialty such as pediatric cardiology, neonatology or critical care medicine for one or more additional years. This year’s 26 pediatric interns came to UAMS and Arkansas Children’s from 16 states and two other countries. Five interns training in medicine-pediatrics, a four-year program, also participated in the bus tour.

Sydney Middleton, M.D., a pediatric intern who graduated from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, was eager to learn about factors impacting the lives of the children and families she will be caring for during her residency. She had been active in the student-run free clinic in Birmingham, serving as the organization’s outreach executive officer during her second year.

“So much of patient care involves social elements that are not taught in textbooks in medical school, so getting out in the community and learning about those we care for was an invaluable experience,” Middleton said.

“The tour was incredibly well done, and it helped me start to recognize some of the disparities, resource needs and locations of our families within this community,” she said. “It also provided me with options for how we can address some of these needs. I am so grateful to Dr. Perin for putting this together because now I have a better, clearer perspective from which to care for my patients while here in Little Rock.”

James Graham, M.D., a longtime educational leader in the UAMS College of Medicine, has been named the college’s next executive associate dean for academic affairs. He will begin serving in his new role following the retirement of Richard P. Wheeler, M.D., on January 31, 2020.

“Those who have worked with Dr. Graham in his current post as associate dean for undergraduate medical education know that he brings great enthusiasm, collegiality and dedication to our educational mission, as well as extensive experience in medical education and strong institutional knowledge,” said Christopher T. Westfall, M.D., FACS, executive vice chancellor of UAMS and dean of the college. “These strengths will serve Dr. Graham very well as he leads our academic mission in collaboration with our outstanding leaders in undergraduate medical education and student affairs.”

Graham graduated from the College of Medicine in 1985 and remained at UAMS for his general pediatrics residency. He completed the University of Oklahoma-based National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect’s Interdisciplinary Training Program and continued his training in the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship at UAMS before joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 1991. He became an associate professor in 1996 and was promoted to professor in 2005.

Graham directed the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship in 1992-1997 and again in 2005-2010. He directed the Pediatrics Junior Clerkship in 2004-2009. He served as associate medical director of the Pediatric Emergency Department at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in 1992-2004 and as chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine in 2005-2010.

Graham has held central educational roles in the college for the past two decades. He directed the Introduction to Clinical Medicine I course (now Practice of Medicine I) from 1999 to 2017. He has been active in numerous education-focused committees at UAMS and ACH, including the COM Curriculum Committee and the Undergraduate Medical Education Competencies Committee. Graham was appointed to his current post as associate dean for undergraduate medical education in 2010.

He has received many awards for teaching including the college’s student-selected Gold Sash and Red Sash awards, and he was three-time winner of the Educator of the Year award in the Department of Pediatrics. In addition to his work at UAMS, Graham served as chair of the Governor’s Trauma Advisory Council in 2008-2014, during development of Arkansas’ statewide trauma system.

“A strong mark of Dr. Graham’s leadership in our educational programs was the great success of our most recent Liaison Committee on Medical Education site visit and accreditation process in 2014-2015,” Westfall said.

With Graham as the primary leader of the comprehensive effort, UAMS received the maximum eight-year re-accreditation and exceptionally positive comments from the organization. Sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education accredits medical schools in the United States and Canada.

By Amy Widner

Arkansas and Georgia both face challenges and opportunities when it comes to reaching underserved health populations in the rural South, said Valerie Montgomery Rice, M.D., president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine.

Rice said both Morehouse and UAMS have vital roles to play in addressing health equity as a means of improving health care as a whole — in Arkansas, Georgia and beyond.

Rice visited UAMS June 21-22 to give advice, but also to engage in dialogue. She gave lectures, met one-on-one with leadership and held a discussion roundtable with city and state leadership.

As part of the visit, Rice gave two visiting distinguished lectures. During “The Blueprint to Health Equity,” Rice said that older models focused on equality, which means giving everyone the same thing. Newer approaches recognize that not everyone starts with the same resources.

Instead, equity should be the goal, Rice said. Equity treats people as individuals.

“Equity gives them what they need, when they need it, and in the amount they need to reach their optimal level of health, based on all the circumstances that they bring to the table,” Rice said. “Many times, those circumstances are not within that individual’s control.”

At Morehouse School of Medicine — a historically black medical college in Atlanta, Georgia, which was founded in 1975 — Rice said they have made health equity part of their strategic vision. When they talk about translating scientific discoveries, building bridges and preparing future health care leaders, health equity is always part of the equation, she said.

Medical schools like Morehouse and UAMS can serve as health equity leaders, Rice said. For example, when it comes to preparing future leaders, Morehouse uses a strategic plan to target young people from rural areas in Georgia, inspire them to pursue medical careers, and mentor them through the process. This technique takes advantage of the fact that people who are from the rural South are more likely than others to return to the rural South to practice health care when they finish their education.

“It’s important because we need to deliver on the promise of science,” Rice said. “Science is making miracles every day. We create opportunities for life, we improve quality of life, and we extend life. That’s what science does, and everyone ought to have the opportunity for that. That promise should not be affected by your gender, your identity, your race, your ethnicity, your orientation or your ZIP code. Our goal is equity, but our real goal is liberation.”

Rice is the first woman to lead the freestanding medical institution, which began as part of Morehouse College before becoming independent in 1981. She is the founding director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at Meharry Medical College. She is a renowned infertility specialist and researcher. Among her recent honors, she was named to the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans and received the 2017 Horatio Alger Award. Rice has been named to the 100 Most Influential Georgians three years in a row.

During her visit to UAMS, Rice met with UAMS College of Medicine Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean Christopher T. Westfall, M.D.; Provost and Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed. D.; Interim Senior Vice Chancellor for Clinical Programs and Interim UAMS Medical Center CEO Stephen A. Mette, M.D.; Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion Brian Gittens, Ed.D.; and many others.

The roundtable discussion was moderated by Gloria Richard-Davis, M.D., a professor in the UAMS Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and attended by members of the Arkansas Medical, Dental & Pharmaceutical Association, Arkansas Legislative Black Caucus, Arkansas Minority Health Commission and representatives of the Arkansas Department of Health and the city of Little Rock Mayor’s Office.

By Benjamin Waldrum

Edith Irby Jones, M.D., who became a pioneer when she enrolled at UAMS in 1948 as the first African American to enroll in an all-white medical school in the South, and who went on to a distinguished career as a doctor, educator and philanthropist, passed away on July 15. She was 91.

“All of UAMS is deeply saddened to hear that Dr. Jones has passed away,” said UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA. “She shook the world when she enrolled at UAMS in 1948, and we will honor her by recognizing that the journey she started is not done.”

“Dr. Jones has had a dramatic, lasting impact on health care that will never, ever go away,” Patterson said. “She was a tremendous woman, and she opened so many doors for minority students. We are forever in her debt. I would like to extend my heartfelt sympathies to Dr. Jones’ family and to all those here at UAMS who counted her as a mentor and friend.”

“Our beloved alumna was a courageous trailblazer, not only during her time as a student at UAMS, but in the decades since then as she dedicated her career to the underserved,” said Christopher T. Westfall, M.D., FACS, executive vice chancellor of UAMS and dean of the College of Medicine. “We are profoundly grateful for all that she gave and everything she accomplished throughout her lifetime.”

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Dr. Edith Irby Jones, but encouraged by her international legacy of service,” said Brian Gittens, Ed.D., M.P.A., vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion. “Her life embodied Dr. Martin Luther King’s call that ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ We are honored to uphold her tremendous legacy of service in our efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion at UAMS and beyond.”

Edith Mae Irby was born near Conway in 1927 to Mattie and Robert Irby. Her father, a sharecropper, died when she was 8, and her older sister died of typhoid fever at the age of 12, largely due to her impoverished family’s lack of access to medical attention. Jones herself had rheumatic fever as a child and was unable to walk or attend school for a year. These experiences prompted her to seek a career in medicine, with the goal of helping those who could not afford standard medical care.

According to her official biography in the National Library of Medicine, Jones recalled, “The children who were able to have medical care would live; I saw the doctor going in and out of their homes. Although it may not be true, I felt that if I had been a physician, or if there had been physicians available, or we had adequate money, that a physician would have come to us.”

When Jones enrolled at UAMS in 1948, there were 6,500 medical students in the country, but only 185 were African American – and nearly all of them attended historically black colleges. Jones ranked 28th out of 230 applicants to UAMS that year, and H. Clay Chenault, M.D., then dean of the College of Medicine, made the decision to desegregate medical education and accept her. That year, the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees voted to increase the class size by one, so that it could not be said by those in the public who opposed the decision that Jones was somehow “taking a spot” from a white person.

Although she had been accepted to attend classes, Jones faced death threats and intimidation, and was not allowed to use the same dining, lodging or bathroom facilities as other UAMS students. Resisting the segregationist rules, many of her classmates chose to eat with her and study with her at her apartment.

During her second year of school, Irby and Dr. James B. Jones married; they subsequently had three children. In 1952, Jones received her Doctor of Medicine degree and was accepted to complete the first residency by an African American at a hospital in Arkansas.

Myra Jones Romain, Jones’ daughter, spoke in September on her mother’s love of UAMS.

“Her first love has always been UAMS, because she realized that they were taking a big leap of faith in admitting her,” Romain said. “She made a commitment to make sure that she did her part, not just to finish, not just to graduate, but to go forward after graduation and do something.”

She would receive financial help from the community as a show of support, Romain said, such as a quarter taped to a piece of cardboard from members of her church. Once, when she was missing $50 for tuition, Daisy Bates collected the amount for her in a coffee can.

“She never forgets that,” Romain said. “She recognizes that there were a lot of people behind her getting her here, and there were people here who had to then say, ‘Okay, we’ll open the door.’”

After graduation, Jones opened a general practice in Hot Springs before moving to Houston, Texas, and became the first African American woman intern at Baylor College of Medicine Affiliated Hospital. She maintained her practice in Houston’s “third ward” for several decades, serving those who could not afford to go anywhere else for medical care.

In 1985, Jones was elected the first female president of the National Medical Association, and was the only female founding member of the Association of Black Cardiologists. She taught, consulted, or provided health care in not only the United States but in Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, China, Russia and throughout Africa. Jones continued teaching and practicing medicine at the University of Texas Medical School and the Baylor College of Medicine until 2014.

Among her many awards and honors, Jones was inducted into the UAMS College of Medicine Hall of Fame in 2004 and was inducted into the inaugural class of women honored by the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

In addition to her distinguished medical career, Jones was also an activist for civil rights, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as part of the civil rights movement. She was the only physician and female member of the so-called “Freedom Four,” who spoke across the South in homes and churches encouraging people to join the civil rights movement.

UAMS honored Jones in September with a month-long celebration of her life and career, with three events sponsored by the Center for Diversity Affairs: a historical presentation and exhibit; a four-woman discussion panel; and luncheon attended by Jones and featuring M. Joycelyn Elders, M.D., former U.S. surgeon general, as keynote speaker.

In a statement read at the celebration, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said, “Edith Irby Jones was a skilled and compassionate healer who demonstrated exemplary courage in breaking through racial and gender barriers, and her ongoing commitment to providing health care to those in need had a positive impact on the lives of countless individuals.”

“This African American woman, 5 feet tall, was a giant,” said Erick Messias, M.D., associate dean for faculty affairs, at the historical presentation.

“There are going to be days where you don’t feel like you necessarily belong,” said Sasha Ray, an SNMA regional director and third-year student, at the four-woman panel. “But there’s always a quiet strength in the back of my mind, of knowing that I am participating in the tradition of a long line of women of color, of black women here at this institution, who have asserted their right to take up space. Dr. Jones was the genesis of that.”

Elders, an emeritus professor of pediatrics and distinguished professor of public health, was the first African American, second woman and first Arkansan appointed as U.S. surgeon general. She was inspired to become a doctor in 1950 after hearing Jones give a lecture at Philander Smith College.

“I’ve been following her ever since,” Elders said. “Before that time, I came from the cotton fields in southern Arkansas. I thought that if I got out of the cotton patch, that would’ve been real progress, but after that day, all I wanted to be was just like Dr. Irby.”

During the ceremonies, a scholarship was established in Jones’ honor by retired Maj. Gen. Elder Granger, M.D., a distinguished alumni in the College of Medicine. To make a donation in support of the Edith Irby Jones, M.D., Scholarship, visit www.giving.uams.edu/EIJScholarship.

In a 2006 interview with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Jones said she learned her greatest life lesson from her father on the day he died.

“The greatest lesson I’ve ever learned, [which] I learned from my father, is that indeed what you give, comes back in multiples,” Jones said. “He told me then, ‘Edith, you don’t get it back all at that time, but when you give, you do get back in multiples – but it may not come back at the same time nor from the same source that you give it.’ And that has been my philosophy in life – never fail to give – expecting it to come back from the same source or that it might come back immediately.”

Most physicians have never taken a financial course. As a result, many make mistakes with money early in their career. Jason Mizell, M.D., of the Department of Surgery, realized this was a huge issue in the medical community and developed a Business and Medicine course from scratch. Perhaps one of the first of its kind, the full 4-year track helps students and residents learn about and take charge of their finances both in and out of practice. Dr. Mizell was recently featured on the Doctors Unbound podcast. Listen to hear more of the story of his course: https://www.doctorsunbound.com/podcast/financial-education-fixing-the-missing-link-in-med-school/ 

By Amy Widner

UAMS researcher Tiffany Weinkopff, Ph.D., has received a 2019 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, sponsored by Oak Ridge Associated Universities, which recognizes promising new scientific careers and supports their development.

UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA; Vice Chancellor for Research Shuk-Mei Ho, Ph.D.; and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Lawrence E. Cornett, Ph.D., surprised Weinkopff recently in her office to present the award.

“You were selected from among 167 other applicants in a peer-reviewed evaluation process that included scientists from throughout the nation,” Patterson said. “You’re going to get $5,000 to go toward your research, and we’ve matched that with $5,000 more for a total of $10,000. Congratulations! I see this as validation that other people see your work as we do: as important research at the forefront of medical advancement.”

Weinkopff is an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the UAMS College of Medicine. She studies the disease process behind leishmaniasis, an infection spread by parasites that is found in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Some patients easily heal their skin lesions following infection, while others suffer long-term issues like skin ulcers and destroyed tissue. Some forms of the infection are fatal.

In the body, leishmaniasis causes a massive influx of immune cells to the infection site, dramatic changes to the surrounding blood vessels, and an expansion to the body’s lymphatic network. Weinkopff’s lab hopes to uncover exactly how some of these processes occur at the cellular and molecular level to understand how they might be controlled. They are also studying how the wounds caused by the infection heal.

Surprisingly, when Patterson, Ho and Cornett met Weinkopff, they learned that Patterson worked on the same cells and molecular pathway earlier in his career.

Weinkopff’s work could have implications for treating leishmaniasis and similar diseases. Known as the Neglected Tropical Diseases, they affect more than 1 billion people — or one-sixth of the world’s population — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, better understanding the disease process could have applications for treating other types of infection, autoimmune disease and cancer.

“Dr. Weinkopff’s work has the potential to help millions, if not billions of people,” Ho said.

Weinkopff came to UAMS about two years ago. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and performed her Ph.D. dissertation work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Shortly after coming to UAMS, she was offered a position in the UAMS Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses, directed by Mark Smeltzer, Ph.D. The center has earned $21 million in funding through the NIH’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) program, which provides funding and mentoring to researchers who are early in their careers.

“Dr. Weinkopff is the first faculty member from UAMS to receive the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award,” said Cornett, who represents UAMS with the Oak Ridge Associated Universities. “We recruited her to UAMS and got her involved in the COBRE because we think her work could have a significant impact on human health. We are pleased to see that a national organization like the ORAU agrees.”

One of the goals of the COBRE program is to help institutions establish themselves as centers of technology and expertise by attracting promising scientists with adjacent interests to work in the same place, sharing knowledge and tools.

Weinkopff said that a key piece of technology needed for her work, a two-photon microscope that allows her to look at the behavior of cells near the Leishmania infection site in real time, was already at UAMS. She said this two-photon microscope and other COBRE-funded technologies are instrumental in her work. With the Powe grant, she will be able to invest in more of the technology she needs to pursue her research.

“The Powe Award is almost like a pilot seed investment, and by matching the grant, the university shows that it’s behind you as well,” Weinkopff said. “It will help me take this work to the next level and expand into new techniques and technologies.”

UAMS has three COBRE centers, which are launching new scientific careers, attracting top talent and creating concentrations of expertise on topics like infectious diseases, cancer therapy and bone health. UAMS faculty lead two additional COBRE centers on childhood obesity prevention and pediatrics at Arkansas Children’s Research Institute.

The Oak Ridge Associated Universities is a consortium of American universities that aims to advance national priorities and serve the public interest by integrating academic, government and scientific resources globally.