Eda Graciela Aguilera Aguscia knows how important a solid education is to success in life. That’s why she’s doing all she can to increase the number of children in Honduras with access to an education.

Aguilera, who operates a school and daycare with her sister, Marcia, in San Pedro Sula, Cortes, spent a few weeks at UAMS Head Start schools in Pulaski County to learn the approaches used in the United States for early childhood development and education. She came to UAMS as a Fellow of the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI) Professional Fellows program. She was hosted by Charles Feild, M.D., retired executive director of the UAMS Head Start program.

The program, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, allows entrepreneurs and leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean to travel to the U.S. to network and learn from their counterparts in America and provide them with the tools and training necessary to make a difference in their communities and countries.

This is the first year UAMS has taken part in the program, said Tyra Larkin, director of UAMS Head Start.

“We were interested because she was from another country and we could make a difference in early childhood in a country that may not have as many resources or strategies related to the growth and development of young children,” said Larkin.

Aguilera’s two weeks in Arkansas allowed her to sit in on board and leadership meetings, ask questions, exchange ideas, visit various UAMS Head Start locations, meet with teachers and work with students. Aguilera met with Head Start area content managers for education and school readiness, disability, health, family engagement and nutrition.

“We tried to show her we’re not just focused on education, we’re focused on the whole child,” said Larkin. “Head Start is a comprehensive model and children have to receive support from many areas to be successful.”

Aguilera’s passion for education and child development was inspired by her mother. In Honduras, a bilingual education in Spanish and English is key to success and opportunity. Her mother made sure Aguilera and her sister went to schools that taught in English and Spanish.

“My mother loves education,” said Aguilera. “She knew how important it was for us.”

Aguilera said many low-income, working families like the one she grew up in, do not enjoy the same opportunity for a bilingual education because of its cost. Her school, Cumorah Daycare and Bilingual School, aims to change that by offering affordable, bilingual instruction to those families.

“Every day on my way to work I see kids on the street asking for money,” said Aguilera. “I’m not better than them. They could be engineers or teachers or anything, but they don’t have the opportunity because they’ve been condemned to poverty. My sister and I decided to start this school to give kids the opportunity to overcome those challenges and give them a chance to achieve happiness.”

Since 2015, Cumorah has provided instruction and care for children from 18 months to 6 years old. The school currently has 17 children in three different levels of preschool and first grade.

Aguilera said her time at UAMS Head Start was transformational.

“Because we lack government funding and are still a very small program, we only focus on education, but it was impactful to see the comprehensive approach at UAMS Head Start,” said Aguilera. “Now, I have the knowledge of how important it is to support these children in more ways than education.”

By Lee Hogan | November 27th, 2017

Celebrating 10 years as northwest Arkansas’ home to academic medicine, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Northwest Regional Campus hosted community leaders, friends, faculty and staff on Nov. 17 for a timeline unveiling and open house.

“We are happy to host the community on campus today to celebrate how far we’ve come with the Northwest Regional Campus in the last 10 years,” said Pearl McElfish, Ph.D., M.B.A, associate vice chancellor of the Northwest Regional Campus. “It’s a great opportunity for reflection on the past and to look forward to a future of continued partnerships that will advance academic medicine in northwest Arkansas.”

About 150 members of the public joined McElfish, community leaders, former faculty and other campus leadership in the lobby of the Fayetteville building for the event.

“A lot of you in the audience today – from both on campus and off – played a key role in making this a success,” McElfish said. “Your hard work and collaborative spirit have been vital. As we grow, we look forward to that continued support.”

The timeline is located in the Fayetteville building, near the Regional Campus Conference Room. It starts in 2007 and includes key dates in campus history extending to the present day.

Campus History

In 2007, UAMS made a commitment to academic medicine in northwest Arkansas with the introduction of a regional campus. Peter O. Kohler, M.D., was named vice chancellor and set about building an interprofessional medical education opportunity that also supports the community through research and clinical services.

“We worked hard to get the funding from the state to get started and worked with the county to secure the building,” said Kohler. “It was a big win for us, for the county and the region. We’ve come a long way in that time.”

The UAMS College of Pharmacy appointed Eric Schneider, Pharm.D., associate dean of the Northwest Regional Campus in 2009. Six third-year medical students came to campus that summer, starting their time on campus with a wall-breaking ceremony to acknowledge the major renovations to come. They graduated in May 2011.

Chris Smith, M.D., was appointed the first regional dean for the UAMS College of Medicine that year. The College of Pharmacy also welcomed its first class of third-year students in 2011. The Northwest Regional Campus housed 107 students and 30 postgraduate medical residents at that time.

“The region’s growth really started to take off and lots of amazing things were happening,” said Kohler. “Health care has been coming more into focus as the population rapidly expands.”

In 2012, Bill Buron, Ph.D., R.N.C., was appointed the first assistant dean for the UAMS College of Nursing in the northwest region. The Pat and Willard Walker Student Clinical Education Center, where students simulate patient interactions, opened in 2013.

In 2014, there was a flurry of activity. John Jefferson, Ph.D., began as inaugural director of the Doctor of Physical Therapy program, which was championed by area leaders. The Northwest Regional Campus is the sole home of the UAMS Physical Therapy program. The Outpatient Therapy Clinic, offering physical, occupational and speech therapy services to the public, opened in the fall.

The North Street Clinic opened in late 2014, offering diabetes care to the local Marshallese community. Marshallese have some of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Almost 200 students have worked in the clinic, learning about effective culturally appropriate patient care.

The first internal medicine residents came to campus in 2015, bringing future medical professionals specializing in comprehensive adult primary care to the area. Inaugural doctor of physical therapy students arrived on campus that year as well. In late 2015, McElfish and Nia Aitaoto, Ph.D., M.P.H., founded the Center for Pacific Islander Health on campus to focus on health studies within the underrepresented population. It is the first in the continental United States to do so.

Sheldon Riklon, M.D., one of two practicing Marshallese physicians in the country, joined the staff and was invested as the first Peter O. Kohler, M.D., Distinguished Professorship in Health Disparities in 2016. At the end of that year, McElfish was appointed associate vice chancellor of the Northwest Regional Campus, succeeding Kohler.

The Future

“As Dr. Kohler said, we have come a long way since those early days,” said McElfish, who succeeded Kohler as associate vice chancellor upon his retirement at the end of 2016. “We have graduated 336, we opened the student-led North Street Clinic, and we launched the Department of Physical Therapy.”

According to the Northwest Arkansas Council, 27 people have moved to the region each day since 2010.

“We are uniquely poised to advance northwest Arkansas through community-based health care and by developing the next generation of leaders in the field,” said McElfish.

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UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; hospital; northwest Arkansas regional campus; statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Myeloma Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and Translational Research Institute. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 2,834 students, 822 medical residents and six dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses throughout the state, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

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By Amy Widner | November 17th, 2017

For the UAMS College of Medicine’s Sharanda Williams, giving back is a way of life. So it’s no surprise that on the Nov. 10 UAMS holiday in observance of Veterans Day, the college’s director of academic affairs was cheerfully serving veterans.

“I have been given so much,” Ms. Williams said as she worked with other members of the UAMS Veterans Awareness Committee to set up for an appreciation luncheon for veterans in transitional housing at St. Francis House Ministries in Little Rock. “To whom much is given, much is required,” she said. “I take that very seriously.”

“Sharanda is one of the most generous and selfless people I have ever known,” said Richard P. Wheeler, M.D., executive associate dean for academic affairs. “She is involved in many worthwhile causes and gives her all to each one.”

Williams’ husband, Reggie, is a U.S. Army veteran, and their son, Jordan, is in Army basic training. The couple have volunteered in UAMS veterans-awareness activities as well as other UAMS and community initiatives for many years.

The luncheon for veterans was one of the culminating events of the UAMS Veterans Awareness Committee’s annual initiative. With contributions from faculty and staff across campus, the committee presented care packages to veteran patients at UAMS and long-term care patients at the Eugene Towbin Veterans Affairs Hospital at Fort Roots in North Little Rock as well as the veterans at St. Francis House.

UAMS staff and faculty are generous with their time and resources year round – and the spirit of giving back is especially clear as the holidays approach.

Another recent group initiative was a chili fundraiser on campus organized by the Office of Sponsored Programs Administrative Network (OSPAN). The office was raising money to purchase holiday gifts for children in a Head Start classroom. The college’s Department of Pediatrics administers 10 Head Start sites in Pulaski County that serve 760 children ages 3-5 and four Early Head Start sites serving nearly 130 infants and toddlers.

Several organizations on campus “adopt” classrooms each year. OSPAN raised about $575 at the Oct. 30 chili fundraiser and was gearing up for a pre-Thanksgiving bake sale of cakes, pies and other goodies on Nov. 21.

Promising research by Erin Mannen, Ph.D., into the use of baby carriers as a break from the cumbersome orthopaedic devices used for babies with hip dysplasia is being featured on the website of the International Hip Dysplasia Institute (IHDI).

Mannen, an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, is conducting biomechanics research into “babywearing” with a $31,722 grant from Boba Inc., and a $10,160 grant from the IHDI.

“It is hypothesized that wearing an infant inward facing in a structured baby carrier results in similar muscle activity and hip positioning as the orthopaedic devices currently used to treat babies with hip dysplasia,” Mannen said. “Appropriate babywearing has the potential to offer parents of hip dysplasia patients a ‘break’ from the cumbersome orthopaedic devices, allowing them to experience the many benefits of babywearing while not endangering their baby’s hips.”

Mannen is looking for healthy babies from two to six months old for the study. For more information, please contact her at emannen@uams.edu.

Jerad Gardner, M.D., associate professor in the departments of Pathology and Dermatology, has become a social media firestorm by teaching, collaborating and connecting with doctors, nurses, medical students and patients around the globe. National Public Radio featured Dr. Gardner in a report about pathology and social media.

Read the story from NPR.

LITTLE ROCK — University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ (UAMS) Curtis Lowery Jr., M.D., on Nov. 6 was honored for his work in maternal-fetal medicine with the Effective Practice Award from the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association.

The Effective Practice Award recognizes individuals or groups whose work has made a significant contribution to effective public health practice within maternal and child health at the community, state, tribal, national or global levels. The association presented the award to Lowery at its annual meeting in Atlanta.

Lowery serves as a professor and the chair of the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is the medical director for the UAMS Center for Distance Health.

He has authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications, and has been influential in obtaining two of the largest grants in UAMS history. Lowery is the founder and medical director of the nationally lauded Antenatal and Neonatal Guidelines, Education, and Learning System (ANGELS), one of the first obstetrical telemedicine programs in the nation.

Lowery received his medical degree in 1981 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. He completed his residency in obstetrics and gynecology in 1985 at Charleston Area Medical Center in Charleston, West Virginia and his maternal-fetal medicine fellowship at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston in 1987. Lowery joined UAMS in 1990 as an assistant professor.

By Ben Boulden| November 13th, 2017

The UAMS Center for Health Literacy won Best Poster in Health Literacy recently at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare and Health Literacy Annual Research Conference held Oct. 8-11 in Baltimore.

The conference was focused on both health care communication and health literacy, meaning the skills to find, understand and use health information to make health decisions. The poster illustrated UAMS’ work to screen patients’ health literacy at UAMS through the electronic medical record platform Epic.

Co-authors on the poster were Kristie B. Hadden, Ph.D., executive director of the Center for Health Literacy; Fred W. Prior, Ph.D., chair of the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Informatics; Latrina Y. Prince, Ed.D., an instructor in the Center for Health Literacy; Rawle A. Seupaul, M.D., professor and chairman of the College of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine; and C. Lowry Barnes, M.D., chair of the College of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.

The project focused on previous national research that demonstrated that patients want their providers to know when they struggle to understand health information. Additional research showed that a single screening question could predict whether a patient is at risk for struggling with health literacy so that providers can make sure that the information they provide is clear and easy to understand.

More than 58,000 patients have been screened at UAMS in the departments of Emergency Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery, as well as primary care and specialty clinics. Overall, about 79 percent of patients screened as having adequate health literacy.

When patients are identified as at risk for health literacy issues, health care professionals are prompted to use a set of best practices that include encouraging patients to ask questions, reading and explaining complicated material out loud, and limiting the amount of written content. They are also encouraged to use the teach-back method to confirm understanding of complex information, in which health care professionals explain information in plain language, then ask the patient to repeat the information in their own words.

“It is often difficult to confirm understanding with patients; when asked if they understand, patients often reply ‘yes,’ and if they have any questions, they often say, ‘no.’” said Hadden. “You can uncover many misunderstandings or misinformation, and clarify when you ask a patient to explain what they heard in their own words.”

Hadden said the results show that screening patients for health literacy can provide benefits for both health care providers and patients as each will better understand their counterpart and forge a stronger relationship and level of trust.

“This is an example of how we can use informatics for population health care in an innovative way,” said Hadden. “There’s so much more to do with this project and the data. This was just an optimistic first glance.”

UAMS hosted the 2017-2018 American Heart Association (AHA) “Sweethearts” – 70 girls from high schools throughout central Arkansas – during two evenings in October.

AHA Sweethearts is a year-long program that introduces sophomore girls to the importance of heart health, the mission of the AHA, and the region’s investment into heart-related activities.

At UAMS, the students were exposed to a range of research activities, with demonstrations focusing on protein engineering, clinical simulations, heart and kidney functions and cancer.

UAMS organizers were former AHA Established Investigator Award recipients Jerry Ware, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Medicine Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and Steve Post, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Pathology.

Other faculty participants included assistant professor Aime Franco, Ph.D., and professor K.I. Varughese, Ph.D., of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics; Nishank Jain, M.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine Division of Nephrology; and Kevin Phelan, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences. James Marsh, M.D., Nolan Professor and Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, welcomed the students and stressed the importance of AHA-sponsored research to UAMS.

Ware, Post and Varughese have supported AHA research activities and have received AHA support in the past. Jain currently holds an AHA Scientist Development Award.

LITTLE ROCK – The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded an $8.3 million grant to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) for expansion and enhancement of an archive containing freely accessible cancer medical images and data.

The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) is a free online service that hosts a large collection of cancer-related medical images available for public download. All patient identification has been removed from the images and supporting data, which include outcomes, treatment details, genetic information, pathology reports and expert analyses when available. Since its formation about seven years ago, TCIA data has been used to produce almost 500 academic papers.

In 2015, the archive moved from Washington University in St. Louis to UAMS when its lead principal investigator, Fred Prior, Ph.D., took the position as the first-ever chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine. Prior assumed leadership of the TCIA project during his tenure at Washington University. Additional principal investigators on the project are Ashish Sharma, Ph.D., of Emory University in Atlanta and Joel Saltz, M.D., Ph.D., of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York.

The grant, titled “TCIA Sustainment and Scalability: Platforms for Quantitative Imaging Informatics in Precision Medicine,” supports the TCIA by expanding its capacity to provide data-driven information and images for use in research studies; adding new high-quality data collections; and encouraging the engagement, collaboration and dissemination of information among the research community.

“Since 2011, the Cancer Imaging Archive has encouraged and supported cancer-related research by acquiring, curating, hosting and managing collections of images and other data essential to the discovery process. This grant will allow us to undergo the continuous improvements and expansion necessary to provide the large collections of data required to test and validate cancer research studies for years to come,” said Prior, professor in the Department of Bioinformatics in the UAMS College of Medicine.

Biomedical informatics uses computers, rather than traditional laboratories, to extract knowledge from large sets of data. Under Prior’s leadership, the UAMS department has grown to include about 50 faculty and staff members responsible for developing computational tools to assess and manage medical and public health information for  research programs.

The ultimate goal of the archive is the advancement of precision medicine, which allows for therapies to be tailored to the individual needs of each patient based on the specific makeup of his or her cancer. Prior and his team are accomplishing this goal by using computers to read and understand medical images in new ways and by applying these tools across multiple formats, from microscope images of tumor biopsy samples to CT images of the lung.

Prior’s research team for this grant includes Lawrence Tarbox, Ph.D.; Mathias Brochhausen, Ph.D.; Tracy Nolan; Kirk E. Smith; William C. Bennett; Roosevelt D. Dobbins; Diana Stockton; and Sean M. Berryman.

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UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; hospital; northwest Arkansas regional campus; statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Myeloma Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and Translational Research Institute. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 2,834 students, 822 medical residents and six dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses throughout the state, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

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By Susan Van Dusen | October 31st, 2017 |

Pediatric allergist and immunologist Josh Kennedy, M.D., wants to help kids with asthma avoid the life-threatening complications that too often develop from a simple cold.

Neurosurgeon Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D., hopes to improve immunotherapies for cancer by better understanding why the body’s immune cells sometimes convert to a form that helps tumors grow.

Emergency medicine physician Michael Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., wants to find new ways to treat patients with opioid addiction and to improve care in the Emergency Department for those who are vulnerable to suicide.

These goals spurred all three UAMS College of Medicine faculty members to pursue careers as physician-scientists – and drew them to the college’s Clinician-Scientist Development Program.

As the third group of trainees to join the program since it was established in 2015, Kennedy, Rodriguez and Wilson are receiving substantial protected time for research for three years. Clinical work done in their remaining time provides the basis for their research and their pursuit of research funding.

Participants receive individual mentoring, specially tailored educational programs and access to activities with other clinician scientists and research training groups. Individual development plans are formulated annually for each member, and progress is evaluated twice a year by the program’s faculty advisory board.

The program receives funding support from UAMS’ Integrated Clinical Enterprise.

The aim is to increase the ranks of specially trained physician-scientists, who are vital in efforts to translate new biomedical knowledge into better clinical care. It is designed to help new clinician-scientists become independently funded for their research in today’s difficult extramural funding environment and to help them build fulfilling careers.

“For early-career physician-scientists to be funded by the National Institutes of Health, they have to be at the peak of their game,” said founding Director Charlotte Hobbs, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics and executive associate dean for clinical and translational research. “They are only going to be funded if their grant application scores in the top 10^th to 15^th percentile. To accomplish that, they’ve got to have excellent mentoring and protected research time as well as enthusiasm and passion. That all comes together in our Clinician-Scientist Development Program.”

“I am really, really excited about this group of individuals,” said Hobbs, a pediatric hospitalist, epidemiologist and national leader in birth defects research who has received more than $100 million in external grant funding over the past 21 years. “All evidence points to these three new members having the appropriate background, early training and drive to have really outstanding careers as physician-scientists.”

Hobbs noted that the Clinician-Scientist Development Program was part of the recruitment effort for both Wilson, who joined the college’s Department of Emergency Medicine as an assistant professor in January and now also holds an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, and Rodriguez, who joined the Department of Neurosurgery as an assistant professor in July.

“The presence of a well-established program run by a clinician-scientist was a big draw to coming to UAMS,” said Rodriguez. “Becoming a successful surgeon scientist is quite difficult, especially because of the clinical demands. The Clinician-Scientist Development Program’s protected research time, mentorship and professional resources, as well as the focus on collaborative work, are very important to me.”

Rodriguez earned her doctorate in pathology in 2008 and her medical degree in 2009 in the NIH-sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She completed her neurosurgery residency at Wake Forest University Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she was awarded an American Association of Neurological Surgeons Neurosurgery Research Education Foundation research fellowship for her work in glioblastoma.  She also was a Council of State Neurosurgical Societies Socioeconomic Fellow and a Congress of Neurological Surgeons Leadership Fellow during her residency. She continued her training in neurosurgical oncology as fellow at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, where she specialized in immunotherapy trials.

“My research focuses on the tumor microenvironment,” Rodriguez said. “A person’s immune system can sometimes fight cancer cells. However, oftentimes the immune cells recruited to the tumor site are converted to a phenotype that actually makes them able to help cancer cells grow. My laboratory is interested in understanding how this happens and how we could convert the immune cells back to an anti-cancer phenotype.”

As with Rodriguez, the Clinician-Scientist Development Program was a plus for Wilson during his recruitment to UAMS.

“I am very pleased to be working with such a talented and diverse group of clinicians, and I am delighted to be here at UAMS,” said Wilson, who established the Department of Emergency Medicine’s Behavioral Emergencies Research lab. The lab focuses primarily on applied psychiatric emergencies that are of clinical relevance to emergency physicians. Recent projects have centered on suicide screening, agitation in patients, and the side effects of second-generation antipsychotics in an emergency department setting.

“Arkansas ranks No. 10 in the nation in suicide,” Wilson said. “We would like to reduce these preventable deaths to zero.”

Wilson received his medical degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Medicine in 2006 and his doctorate in psychology the same year from the university’s Department of Psychology. He completed his emergency medicine residency at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and continued his training there as a clinical research fellow.

Wilson went on to become associate director of the UCSD Department of Emergency Medicine Clinical Research Scholar Fellowship while serving as an attending physician in the department from 2012 through 2016. He is a reviewer for several academic journals and has published broadly in the field of behavioral emergencies and agitated patients.

Kennedy graduated from the College of Medicine in 2006 and completed his residency at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital, serving as chief resident of the Medicine/Pediatrics Program in 2009-2010. He continued his training with a fellowship in allergy and immunology at the University of Virginia Health Systems in Charlottesville, where he began his research into the relationship between the rhinovirus and asthma.

“Sixty to 80 percent of children who are seen in the Emergency Department for asthma exacerbations will have evidence of the rhinovirus – the common cold,” Kennedy said. “Unfortunately, we do not understand the mechanisms of the rhinovirus that cause this very dangerous situation.

“We are studying the differences in the immune response to this virus between those with and without asthma. We hope that our research will lead to targeted approaches to keep children out of the Emergency Department.”

Kennedy joined the faculty in 2013 as an assistant professor of pediatrics and internal medicine in the Allergy and Immunology Section of the Department of Pediatrics. His research career got a kick start that year with a KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Award from the UAMS Translational Research Institute. In 2016 Kennedy received a five-year, $877,000 K08 training award from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which provides salary and laboratory support for his investigations.

The Clinician-Scientist Development Program is providing additional support for his lab – but Kennedy said the program’s benefits are much broader.

“The program brings together young investigators from different specialties across UAMS,” he said. “We are able to share ideas, discuss data and provide support to other clinician-scientists with different backgrounds and experiences. The university is large and clinician-scientists are relatively few in number. I doubt that I would be able to do this without the program.”

Rodriguez agreed. “It is easy to get isolated on a large campus,” she said. “The Clinician-Scientist Program provides opportunities to discuss pitfalls and successes with other clinician-scientists at various stages of their careers and research. Being a clinician-scientist is a unique experience, and certain questions can only be answered by colleagues who understand the professional demands from both the clinical and research sides of our world.”