Our Clinical Operations Team: Lauryn Schultz, Dr. Elizabeth Turnipseed, Libby Bollier, Erin Snow, and Mary Coleman Dobbins.
The Department is delighted to announce a new liaison who will work with our clinical leadership team. Libby Bollier, MSHA, will serve as Inpatient Medical Services Manager with UAB Medicine to coordinate clinical operations and workflow between UAB Hospital and the Department of Medicine. This new role is designed to enhance our collaboration and streamline logistics in providing excellent care for our patients.
More Good News for January 8, 2020
Residency program directors now have a better understanding of the ABIM leave policies for resident physicians thanks to a recent publication in Annals of Internal Medicine. Senior-author, Lisa Willett, MD, MACM (Professor, General Internal Medicine) and colleagues demonstrated that most directors had mistakenly applied a shorter duration for allowable time away from training than what the ABIM regulation was designed to permit—a policy that was especially relevant for calculating parental leave. The ABIM has followed up the report with a statement of clarification and has updated these leave policies on their web site.
Monica Baskin, PhD (Professor, Preventive Medicine) has received a grant from the Mike Slive Foundation to find ways to improve prostate cancer screening among African-American men. The project aims to identify culturally-appropriate interventions to remove barriers to screening. Kudos, Dr. Baskin!
Sumanth D. Prabhu, MD, (Professor and Director, Cardiovascular Disease) was elected President-Elect of the American Heart Association Metro Birmingham Board of Directors. Congratulations on this well-deserved recognition of your leadership, Dr. Prabhu!
Ravi Bhatia, MD (Professor and Director, Hematology and Oncology) is the School of Medicine's latest "Featured Discovery" recipient. Dr. Bhatia and colleagues from across the globe set out to investigate why the most popular treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia—tyrosine kinase inhibitors—fails to eliminate the stem cells that propagate the disease. They discovered that expression of a particular chemokine by specific bone marrow stromal cell controls whether leukemia stem cells stay in their dormant, treatment-resistant state; and that targeting these niche interactions can activate leukemia stem cells, make them sensitive to treatment, and ultimately enhance their elimination. We are thrilled to congratulate Dr. Bhatia on this exciting breakthrough.
Terry Shaneyfelt, MD (Professor, General Internal Medicine) has been selected to serve the Internal Medicine Item-Writing Task Force of the American Board of Internal Medicine. The group will focus on the development of exam content for the new two-year assessment option called a Knowledge Check-In. Congratulations on this exciting new role, Dr. Shaneyfelt!
Mike Saag, MD (Professor, Infectious Diseases) has been named editor of AIDS, the highest impact of all AIDS-related journals, publishing 18 issues per year. The Department is thrilled that Dr. Saag will serve in this prestigious role.
The Department is pleased to welcome Dr. Ruchit Shah (Assistant Professor, Cardiovascular Disease) to UAB.
A native of Alabama, Dr. Shah completed his medical degree from the University of South Alabama and internal medicine residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He completed a cardiology fellowship at Medical College of Georgia, where he was the Glenn Garrison Chief Cardiology Fellow; and he completed his electrophysiology fellowship last year at UAB. His clinical interests include all aspects of clinical cardiac electrophysiology. He is accepting new patients in the Cardiology Clinic at TKC.
Emily Wong, MD, physician-scientist at the Africa Health Research Institute will present "Studies in HIV and TB in South Africa: from the molecule to the population and back" at noon on Wednesday, January 15, in Margaret Cameron Spain Auditorium.