Jim Bakken

Jim Bakken

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jimb@uab.edu • (205) 934-3887
Chief Communications Officer, Public Relations 

As chief communications officer for the University of Alabama at Birmingham and UAB Medicine, Bakken leads teams that set and execute internal and external communications strategy. Prior to joining UAB in 2012, Bakken spent a decade working with a diverse client base at two full-service communications firms. Bakken spent eight years in Nashville at McNeely Pigott and Fox – one of the largest PR firms in the Southeast – prior to launching Peritus Public Relations in Birmingham in 2010. Bakken has served on the board of the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations, is accredited by the Public Relations Society of America and has been a Birmingham Business Journal Top 40 Under 40 honoree.

Visualize Birmingham without UAB.  Exit the Red Mountain Expressway at University Avenue (without UAB--it would be 8th Avenue South) and drive west. What would we see in place of the 86 square blocks occupied by UAB?
It's been a little more than one year since Ray Watts was named president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. During that 12 months, UAB posted record enrollment for the fifth straight year. The school made several strategic hires, including four new deans. It added some high-tech upgrades to its cancer-fighting arsenal. And it launched a billion-dollar fundraising campaign.
Michael Saag, M.D., has been seeing HIV patients from the beginning, and uses that journey to illustrate what he believes needs to change with health care.
A new study from the UAB School of Public Health suggests that hallucinogens may help reduce criminal recidivism.
The annual award is to recognize outstanding papers related to environmental health sciences and public health that meet the aims, scope and high standards of this journal.
The paper analyzed articles published in the scientific and popular press to separate myths from evidence-supported facts when it comes to obesity.
When the 25-year-old student at UAB's School of Dentistry snapped an iPhone picture of the snow that blanketed Birmingham last week, he had no idea the impact the photo would have as it swept across social media, or its potential to earn him cash. Or to do good. Now's he taking advantage of his 15 minutes, but not to help himself.
From: Chicago Sun-Times
In the Jan. 16 New England Journal of Medicine, Ilana Yurkiewicz of Harvard Medical School, Lisa Soleymani Lehmann of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Bruce Korf of the University of Alabama at Birmingham argue that it is ethical to provide parents with prenatal whole genome sequencing information about their prospective children.
From: Time Healthland
Cabin fever isn’t a psychiatric diagnosis, but it does exist, says Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist with a PhD at the school of public health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “It’s when you’re in a space of restricted freedom for a period of time that you can no longer tolerate.”
Using home-based hospice practices for terminally ill, hospitalized patients could reduce suffering and improve end-of-life care, according to a study. The study “was designed to see whether home-based hospice practices could be successfully integrated into care in hospitals to improve the end-of-life experience for those who remain hospitalized at time of death,” Amos Bailey, MD, of the Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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