May 31, 2017 | Erick Messias, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., has been appointed associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).

Messias is rejoining the UAMS faculty and will also be an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, where he served in a number of leadership positions from 2010 to 2015.

Messias replaces Jeannette M. Shorey II, M.D., who was appointed associate provost for faculty in 2015 and served in both roles during the search for her successor.

“Dr. Messias brings a deep understanding of our academic mission, considerable knowledge about UAMS, and a strong interest in advancing the careers of our faculty members,” said UAMS Executive Vice Chancellor and College of Medicine Dean Pope L. Moseley, M.D. “He has a genuine concern for the well-being of others, a passion for diversity and social justice, and a commitment to fairness and equal treatment for all. He is thoughtful and analytical while also focusing on qualitative aspects of psychiatric care and research, academic medicine and faculty and personal development.”

As associate dean, Messias will lead College of Medicine faculty processes related to recruitment, evaluation, promotion and tenure. He will advance the college’s efforts to support faculty development and foster professionalism. He will work closely with Shorey and the UAMS Faculty Center as the College of Medicine’s representative on the Intercollegiate Faculty Council.

“I am thankful for this opportunity to apply my training and experience in this new role, with the goal of improving support and opportunities for UAMS faculty as they advance through their careers in academic medicine,” Messias said. “I have big shoes to fill in Dr. Shorey and look forward to collaborating with her and the UAMS Faculty Center to provide support and tools so we can continue to improve the training and education of the health care workforce for Arkansas.

“In my most recent job, overseeing Medicaid providers around the state, I’ve had the chance to see firsthand the key role played by UAMS in creating that workforce. While the state has many needs, UAMS has the will and the mission to help improve the health of all Arkansans I feel fortunate to contribute to that mission every day.”

During his previous tenure at UAMS, Messias served as medical director of the Walker Family Clinic, director of the House Staff Mental Health Service and director of the Brain and Behavior course for medical students. He has received many teaching awards and other accolades.

After leaving UAMS, Messias served as vice president and medical director of Beacon Health Options Arkansas.

Messias received his medical degree from Federal University of Ceará in Brazil in 1996. He completed his residency in general psychiatry at the University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt Program. Messias went on to earn a Master of Public Health, complete a residency in preventive medicine and obtain his Ph.D. in psychiatric epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Messias was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine during his final year of work toward his doctorate. He returned to Brazil for two years, practicing psychiatry while also serving as an assistant professor of medicine at the Federal University of Ceará School of Medicine. From 2007 to 2009, he was an associate professor in psychiatry and in biostatistics at the Medical College of Georgia. He also served as medical director of an acute adult psychiatric unit and associate director of psychiatry residency training until his recruitment to UAMS.

By Amy Widner | May 31st, 2017

May 26, 2017 | Of the 308 Arkansas physicians named to the recently released 2017 Best Doctors in America list, nearly 200 are on staff at UAMS.

The list is compiled annually by Best Doctors Inc., a health care information service company headquartered in Massachusetts, and is published by the weekly newspaper Arkansas Times. Researchers at Best Doctors Inc. formulate the list through a polling method that gathers opinions from thousands of doctors across the country. Physicians cannot pay to be included in the database and are not paid to provide input.

Gallup, a well-known and respected research, consulting and public opinion firm, has audited and certified Best Doctors Inc. as using the highest industry standards survey methodology and processes.

The UAMS College of Medicine faculty physicians to make the list cover many specialties and practice at UAMS Medical Center, Arkansas Children’s and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System.

To view all the UAMS doctors who made the list, click here.

By Lee Hogan | May 26th, 2017

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Professor Mark Smeltzer, Ph.D., has been awarded $11 million in federal funding for Phase II of a program that supports microbiology and immunology research.

Phase I of the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant was awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2012 at $10 million. Phase II began May 1 and is $11 million.

The first COBRE grant allowed Smeltzer to establish the UAMS Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses. Its focus is pathogens – bacteria, viruses and microorganisms – and the disease responses they cause in humans.

COBRE grants include funding for individual projects by junior research faculty — those who have just received their first academic appointments. The first grant supported projects on viruses and malaria. The $11 million award continues funding of the center, with individual projects on cancer, Lyme disease, pneumonic plague and chlamydial infection.

Smeltzer co-directs the center along with Richard P. Morrison, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“Everything that we do, at the end of the day, it’s really about human health,” Smeltzer said. “We’re trying to understand how microorganisms and pathogens cause disease in humans, and if you understand that, you’re that much closer to coming up with useful treatments.”

Additionally, technology purchased through the grant benefits researchers across the state. Researchers from other academic institutions and those from government agencies alike have used technology at UAMS purchased with COBRE funds.

“Scientific technology is always advancing, and the funding for us to be able to keep up with these advances is key,” Smeltzer said.

Smeltzer, who studies staphylococcus aureus, is one of the most-well-funded faculty in the UAMS College of Medicine. He has more than $14 million in current grant funding and has received more than $30 million in external grant funding. His current NIH funding ranks him 46th out of 993 microbiology faculty nationwide.

“With this program, over time, you develop this critical mass of people who can work synergistically with each other,” Smeltzer said. “You build up the technology that is essential to propel research forward. A lot has to slide into place, but the end result benefits more than just these individual investigators – it benefits UAMS as an institution, the state of Arkansas and the future of medicine.”

Three junior faculty in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology completed Phase I – assistant professors Karl Boehme, Ph.D., and Jason Stumhofer, Ph.D.; and associate professor Craig Forrest, Ph.D. Boehme and Forrest study viruses, and Stumhofer’s work is about malaria.

The junior faculty selected to participate in Phase II are Ruud Dings, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology; and Jon Blevins, Ph.D., associate professor, Roger Pechous, Ph.D., and Lin-Xi Li, Ph.D., assistant professors – all in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Their research focuses on cancer, Lyme disease, pneumonic plague and chlamydial infection.

Rhonda L. Anthony is administrative coordinator of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses.

“I am proud of this grant, but I don’t kid myself – it’s about teamwork,” Smeltzer said. “If every single person involved in this hadn’t done their part to make it successful, we would not have been approved for Phase II of funding.”

The COBRE grant also includes funding for training and mentoring at the institution level and from national-level COBRE advisers.

“It certainly tipped the scales for me when I was considering job offers,” Boehme said. “In addition to not having to immediately worry about funding and equipment and whether I could afford staff or take on students, it made the department feel like there was a real strategic plan in place, a forward momentum, and a sense that success was a group effort rather than something that was on my shoulders alone.”

Boehme and Stumhofer were recruited from well-regarded postdoctoral programs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, respectively. Both have now successfully written their own NIH grants to sustain the next chapter of their research – a key marker of success under COBRE parameters.

Stumhofer appreciated the collaborative meetings and mentoring that occurred as often as twice a month as part of the program.

“It keeps you from getting isolated, stuck alone in your own lab with a problem that is keeping you from moving forward. Everyone helps you troubleshoot,” Stumhofer said.

Smeltzer, Boehme and Stumhofer agreed that the grant empowers researchers to explore ideas they may not have otherwise considered if they were immediately left on their own to navigate funding and logistics. They said that over the long haul, such programs create better researchers and higher-quality research.

COBRE grants are only available for Institutional Development Award (IDeA) states where NIH funding has been historically low. They include 23 states and Puerto Rico. UAMS is host to three centers funded by COBRE grants. The Center for Translational Neuroscience, led by Edgar Garcia-Rill, Ph.D., has received $22.5 million in funding and is in its third and final phase. The Center for Studies of Host Response to Cancer Therapy, led by Martin Hauer-Jensen, M.D., Ph.D., has received $10.5 million and is in Phase I.

When Jerad Gardner, M.D., stepped up to the podium to address the UAMS College of Medicine’s Class of 2017 at the college’s Honors Convocation on May 19, the first thing he did was take a “selfie” with the class.

The move wasn’t too surprising for Gardner, who has drawn national acclaim for championing the use of social media, mobile devices and other technologies in medical education and the field of pathology.

The assistant professor in the college’s Department of Pathology, clinical co-director of the musculoskeletal/skin curriculum block for medical students and director of the fellowship for residency graduates training in the subspecialty of dermatopathology has earned raves for his ability to teach and connect through social media.

The class chose Gardner to deliver the address from the faculty at the annual ceremony held the evening before the UAMS Commencement Ceremony. Honors Convocation features numerous awards for students and faculty members. Students don the ceremonial doctoral hoods they will wear at commencement and recite the Hippocratic Oath of the medical profession.

Gardner encouraged the graduating seniors to start their career thinking about the end.

“Start thinking now about what is going to make it meaningful,” he said. “How will you know that it’s worthwhile, that it mattered, that you had the impact that you wanted to have?”

Gardner advised graduates to find innovative ways to help patients and their families. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‘cure’ and ‘healing’ are always the same thing,” he said. “Cure whenever you can, but heal always.”

He urged the class to not lose sight of the loved ones in their lives and how they are impacted by the demands of a career in medicine, and to always show them gratitude.

Gardner also encouraged graduates to become mentors to future aspiring physicians. “You can never pay back your mentors,” he said, borrowing an old adage. “You can only pay them forward.”

Four faculty members received Golden Apple Awards, marking their selection as the most outstanding teacher of the year by a vote of each of the four classes in the College of Medicine. Charles Matthew Quick, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Pathology, received the Golden Apple from the senior class. Golden Apples also went to: Toby Vancil, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine (junior class); Sung Rhee, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology (sophomore class); and Alan Diekman, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (freshman class).

A $2.1 million award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will allow the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus to continue and expand its research to identify effective ways to combat diabetes in the Marshallese community.

The three-year award brings together researchers from the UAMS Office of Community Health and Research and the UAMS Center for Pacific Islander Health with the Marshallese community to study a culturally adapted diabetes prevention program designed to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by teaching people who have pre-diabetes how to make modest lifestyle changes that can prevent diabetes.

The Marshallese have some of the highest documented rates of type 2 diabetes of any population group in the world. Health screenings by UAMS found that 41 percent have diabetes, compared to 9.3 percent of the U.S. population. Northwest Arkansas has more than 11,000 Marshallese in the region — the largest community of Marshallese in the continental U.S.

“The goal of this research is to reduce disparities related to type 2 diabetes within the Marshallese community,” said Pearl McElfish, Ph.D., associate vice chancellor for the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus, co-director of the Center for Pacific Islander Health and the principal investigator on this project.

“This particular study was conceived by working with members of the community — largely through churches — to identify the health questions that the Marshallese in Arkansas most want answered,” said McElfish, also an assistant professor in the College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine.

The study will be implemented within Marshallese churches, comparing the effectiveness of the standard Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Intervention with a culturally adapted Pacific Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Intervention.

“When UAMS first met with members of the Marshallese community, we talked about how diabetes was such a problem for our community, and finding a better way to treat and to prevent diabetes is very important to us,” said Wanna Bing, senior project manager for UAMS.

Bing, who is originally from the Marshall Islands, serves as a liaison between UAMS and local Marshallese churches. “The community has been asking for help with a diabetes prevention program for a long time, and this project is going to make a big difference in peoples’ lives.”

The Walmart Foundation is also supporting this research. In December 2016, it awarded a $125,000 grant to the program.

Since 2014, more than $10 million has been awarded to the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus to reduce health disparities in both Marshallese and Hispanic residents of Benton and Washington counties.

“This study continues the valuable research on diabetes that UAMS is conducting with the Marshallese community,” said Peter Kohler, M.D., former UAMS vice chancellor and a co-investigator on this project who has received PCORI funding for previous research on diabetes and Pacific Islanders.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress to fund comparative clinical effectiveness research.

By Yavonda Chase | May 18th, 2017