Seth Landefeld, MD, Department of Medicine Chairman

I am delighted to send you my best wishes for the holidays and new year. I’d love to have you visit us in 2017 to see for yourself how the department and the residency program are thriving.

In the past month, three faculty have published in the New England Journal of Medicine on acute pancreatitis, antibody treatment for HIV infection, and homelessness. We salute Mel Wilcox, MD (1983-1986, CMR 1986-1987), Turner Overton, MD (1999-2002), and Stefan Kertesz, MD, for their brilliant articles.

Our faculty continue to be tremendously engaging and effective teachers. Stan Massie, MD (1994-1997, CMR 1997-1998) recently won the Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher

Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges. This is terrific national recognition for Stan’s gift as a medical educator. Here at UAB, the fourth-year medical students presented Argus Awards to Mike Saag, MD (1981-1984, CMR 1984-1985), James Willig, MD, and Shawn Galin, PhD, for their extraordinary teaching.

Latesha Elopre, MD (2009-2012) is Assistant Professor in our Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the residency program. In addition to producing a top-notch recruitment video, Latesha is working to build our relationships with Morehouse School of Medicine to enhance our efforts to recruit the very best young physicians who are under-represented in medicine.

Our clinical programs continue to grow in both excellence and size. UAB Medicine will open an additional medical intensive care unit in February, as well as a new and expanded unit for performing blood and marrow transplantation and treating hematologic malignancies in 2018.

Our fundraising efforts in honor of Gustavo Heudebert, MD, have reached a major milestone. To date, $145,000 has been raised, reaching the Endowed Scholar level. The Division of General Internal Medicine and The Department of Medicine are committed to raising the $500,000 needed to create an Endowed Professorship for the division and will be matching individual gifts dollar for dollar – for example a gift of $5,000 will be leveraged to provide $10,000 in support. I hope you will join me and dozens of our faculty in honoring Tavo with your gift.

I would love to hear from you about what you’re doing in your medical career and what’s exciting and important to you. Email me directly at sethlandefeld [at] uabmc [dot] edu. 

Best regards,

C. Seth Landefeld, M.D.
Professor and Chair, UAB Department of Medicine