In the Limelight-Medicine at Michigan Fall 1999

In the Limelight

James R. Baker, M.D., professor of internal medicine, chief of the allergy division and director of the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology, received a special recognition award from the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Baker’s award recognizes his work as editor of JAMA Primer, a publication on allergic and immunologic diseases, which is “the most widely read publication on allergy, and is utilized extensively by medical students, residents and primary care physicians.”

Robert H. Bartlett, M.D., professor of surgery and chief of the Division of Critical Care, was awarded a Medal of Special Recognition from the National Academy of Surgery of France for his work in surgical critical care. Dr. Bartlett has also been chosen to receive the McGraw Medal of the Detroit Surgical Association, an annual award given since 1948 for major contributions to American surgery. In conjunction with the award, Bartlett gave a lecture entitled “Romance, Science and the White
Plague.”

Bartlett also was honored as the Robert E. Gross Memorial Lecturer in June, 1999. This honor is bestowed annually by the Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and his lecture was entitled “Surgery on Shattuck Street.”

Christin Carter-Su, Ph.D., professor of physiology and associate director of the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center, received the 15th Annual Sarah Goddard Power Award from the University of Michigan. Carter-Su received the Award in recognition of her leadership, scholarship and sustained service on behalf of women. The Sarah Goddard Power Award was established to honor the late regent who was a strong advocate for women.

Arul Chinnaiyan, (Ph.D. 1997, M.D. 1999), a recent graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program, received a regional (North America) award from the Amersham Pharmacia Biotech and Science Young Scientist Program for 1998. Chinnaiyan was honored for his essay, “Destined to Die: Molecular Dissection of the Cell Death Machine,” and the award was announced in the December 4, 1998 issue of Science. He also received a 1998 Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies.

Theodore M. Cole, M.D., professor emeritus and retired chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, has been selected by the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) as the 1999 recipient of their prestigious ASIA Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is bestowed on an individual whose professional career has centered around the care of individuals with spinal cord injury and disease.

A cofounder of ASIA, an early member of its Board of Directors and past chair of the ASIA Foundation, Cole has had a distinguished career as both clinician and academician. He recently completed his second term as president of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., (Ph.D. Neuroscience 1979, M.D. 1983), associate professor of neurology, has been accepted as a member of the 1999-2000 class of fellows in the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program for Women (ELAM). ELAM fellows work with eminent faculty and national leaders to find innovative ways to implement positive changes needed to reconfigure academic health centers for the 21st century.

Lazar J. Greenfield, M.D., Frederick A. Coller Distinguished Professor and chair of surgery, has been selected to receive a 1999 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Rice University. Greenfield received his award at a ceremony on May 15, 1999 in Houston.

Julian T. Hoff, M.D., Richard C. Schneider Professor of Surgery and chief of neurosurgery, has been named to the National Neurological Disorders and Stroke Advisory Council, the major advisory panel of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The Council reviews applications from scientists seeking financial support for biomedical research and research training on disorders of the brain and nervous system. Members of the Council also advise the Institute on research program planning and priorities. The Council is composed of physicians, scientists and representatives of the public.

Terence Joiner, M.D., (Residency 1985), clinical assistant professor of pediatrics, was named a 1999 “Health Champion” by the Board of Commissioners and Washtenaw County Public Health Department. Joiner was recognized for his support of the County’s Health Improvement Plan and his work on asthma. “He is especially appreciated for his enthusiasm, his caring about suffering in the community, and his insight into many of the puzzling aspects of the health assessment data—the ‘why’ of certain health statistics,” the Health Department said. Joiner was one of only four individuals and organizations recognized.

Ella A. Kazerooni, M.D., (Bachelor’s 1986, M.D. 1988, Residency 1992) associate professor of radiology, has been elected to the office of Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of University Radiologists (AUR). Kazerooni will serve as president of AUR in 2002.

The goals of the AUR are to encourage excellence in laboratory and clinical investigation, teaching and clinical practice, to stimulate an interest in academic radiology as a medical career, to advance radiology as a medical science, and to represent academic radiology nationally and internationally.

Donald G. Kewman, Ph.D., clinical professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, was recently elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Michigan Psychological Association. These honors are bestowed on less than 10 percent of members of these associations and are given for significant contributions to the field of psychology.

Kewman was also elected president of the Rehabilitation Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association and will assume that office in September 1999. The Rehabilitation Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association is the largest organization of psychologists working in the medical rehabilitation field with approximately 1500 members.

Charles J. Krause, M.D., professor and former chair of the Department of Otolaryngology, has been selected as a recipient of the 1999 Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award. The award was established in 1996 in honor of the former dean of the School of Social Work, Harold R. Johnson, to recognize University of Michigan faculty who have exhibited outstanding leadership in the area of cultural diversity. Krause was chosen for his extensive and extraordinary contributions to the multicultural mission of the University, particularly his work in promoting diversity while chair of the Department of Otolaryngology and senior associate dean of the Medical School.

James V. Neel, M.D., Ph.D., Lee R. Dice Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Human Genetics and Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine, received the Annual Award of the Environmental Mutagen Society for 1999 for outstanding research contributions in the area of environmental mutagenesis.

Richard R. Neubig, M.D., Ph.D., (Residency 1984), professor of pharmacology and associate professor of internal medicine, has been named the chair of the Pharmacology Study Section for the National Institutes of Health for 1999 - 2000. The skill and leadership offered by the chairperson of an NIH study section are important for the effectiveness and efficiency of the review process.

Alexander Ninfa, Ph.D., associate professor in biological chemistry, was chosen to receive a 1998-99 Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan. This award, which recognizes both exceptional scholarship and teaching excellence, is one of the highest honors the University bestows upon its faculty. The award was presented in March by President Lee C. Bollinger and Provost Nancy Cantor at the annual Henry Russel Lecture in March, which was delivered this year by Jack Dixon, Ph.D., chair and Minor J. Coon Professor of Biological Chemistry.

Friedrich K. Port, M.D., M.S., professor of internal medicine and epidemiology, served as the Scientific Committee President of the International Society of Nephrology Official Satellite Symposium on “End-Stage Renal Disease Throughout the World: Morbidity, Mortality and Quality of Life”. This two day congress was held in Punta del Este, Uruguay on May 8-9 and dealt primarily with outcomes research in renal failure patients. Port will be the editor for a special supplement of Kidney International that will report on the main papers of this symposium.

Michelle B. Riba, M.D., clinical associate professor and associate chair of education and academic affairs in the Department of Psychiatry, has been elected president of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training. Riba also serves as Secretary of the American Psychiatric Association.

Mark Supiano, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine in the Geriatrics Center, received the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award in Clinical Investigation from the American Geriatrics Society for 1999 at their annual meeting in May. The American Geriatrics Society is a professional organization of health care providers dedicated to improving the health and well-being of older adults.

Alice Telesnitsky, Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, recently completed a three-year stint as a Searle Scholar. The Searle Scholars Program was established in 1980 with a bequest from John G. Searle and his wife. Searle was the grandson of the founder of the pharmaceutical company, G.D. Searle & Company.

Richard L. Wahl, M.D., professor of internal medicine and radiology, recently completed his term as chair of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine (ABNM). The ABNM, established in 1971, tests and certifies physicians who have completed specialty training in nuclear medicine, and is one of the 24 primary medical specialty boards which are members of the American Board of Medical Specialties.

Wahl’s research interests lie in specific targeting of radioactive molecules to cancer for purposes of diagnosis and therapy. Wahl also recently delivered the “Marie Curie Lecture” at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine/World Federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology conjoint meeting in Berlin, on the topic of new radiopharmaceutical therapies of cancer. Wahl has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific papers and has previously received the Berson & Yalow and Tetalman awards from the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

New York Public Library Taps Markel as Director’s Fellow

Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., (M.D. 1986) associate professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases and director of the Historical Center for Health Sciences, has been named a director’s fellow of the Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library.

Markel is one of only fifteen fellows named to this highly competitive inaugural class of the new Center for Scholars and Writers. As a director’s fellow, he will take up a year-long residency at the Center in the New York Public Library beginning in September. Markel will devote his fellowship to a study of the interactions of American immigration, nativism, and public health over the past 120 years.

Duvernoy Named Scholar of Society for Women’s Health Research

Claire S. Duvernoy, M.D., (M.D. 1990, Residency 1993, Fellowship 1996 & 1998), assistant professor of internal medicine, has been chosen by the Society for the Advancement of Women’s Health Research and Pfizer Women’s Health to receive a 1999 Pfizer/SAWHR Scholars Grant for Faculty Development in Women’s Health. The Scholars program is designed to provide research training opportunities for physicians who wish to pursue original research in women’s health at U.S. medical schools.

Duvernoy is one of only three scholars to receive this grant, which provides $65,000 of support per year for three years. Her research focus will be on “Combined Continuous Hormone Replacement Therapy and Myocardial Blood Flow.” She was sponsored by Mark R. Starling, M.D., professor of internal medicine.

The Society for Women’s Health Research was founded in 1990 when it brought to national attention the problem of the exclusion of women from medical research studies and the resulting need for research on conditions experienced by women. The Society is the only national advocacy group whose sole mission it is to improve the health of women through research.

Zazove Receives Neubacher Award

Philip Zazove, M.D., clinical associate professor and assistant chief of family medicine, was awarded the 1998 James Neubacher Award from the University of Michigan. He was honored for his commitment to deaf students, for his contribution of time and talent, and for his role as mentor and role model for deaf students at the U-M and other institutions of higher education.

“Through his efforts,” noted the citation, Zazove “has enabled individuals with disabilities to live more productively and independently, and in so doing, he has enriched our community and represented the University of Michigan in an exemplary manner.” The Neubacher Award is given annually by the U-M Council for Disability Concerns in honor of James Neubacher, a columnist at the Detroit Free Press and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, who died in 1990 of multiple sclerosis.

Zazove also is the author of When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor. Currently the medical director of the west region for ambulatory care at the Health System, he is one of a small group of deaf physicians practicing in the United States.

Lichter President-Elect of American Ophthalmological Society

Paul R. Lichter, M.D., (M.D. 1964, Residency 1968, M.S. 1968), chair and F. Bruce Fralick Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Director of the Kellogg Eye Center, has recently been elected president-elect of the American Ophthalmological Society (AOS). Lichter, a glaucoma specialist, will begin his term as president in May 2000.

Lichter follows two former U-M Department of Ophthalmology chairs to serve as president of the AOS. Walter R. Parker, M.D., served in 1929, and John Henderson, M.D., Ph.D., filled the role in 1970.

Lichter has also been elected to the International Council of Ophthalmology by the International Federation of Ophthalmologic Societies. He is one of three U.S. members of this council. The Council works to improve standards in the practice of ophthalmology worldwide to combat and prevent blinding eye diseases.

Malhotra Recognized for Research

Jyoti Dhar Malhotra, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology in the laboratory of Lori Isom, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmacology, and Michael Hortsch, associate professor of anatomy and cell biology, received the Roche Bioscience Prize for an outstanding poster presentation at the Advances in Ion Channel Research meeting this spring. Their poster was entitled: “Characterization of the cell adhesion functions mediated by voltage-gated sodium channel beta subunits and their interaction with the membrane cytoskeleton.” As the presenting author, Malhotra received the crystal trophy at the Ion Channel Research meeting in San Francisco.

Malhotra also recently received a National Multiple Sclerosis Society Fellowship grant to support her work on molecular interactions of sodium channel beta subunits with cytoskeleton. The Fellowship is a three year award given to only 200 investigators in the United States and abroad who share the Society’s goal of ending the devastating effects of multiple sclerosis.

University of Michigan Health System and Its Physicians Rank High in Local and National Surveys

Retired Detroit-area builder Thomas Duke, now a resident of Charlevoix, describes himself as the University of Michigan Health System’s “best booster. You have a fabulous institution,” he says. “Every visit that a member of my family or I have paid there has been handled so well.”

Duke was so happy with the treatment a daughter received there eight years ago that he sent a big bouquet to the person who had taken his call. Duke says that first visit was the result of looking for a recommendation in Best Doctors in America and that his experiences and those of both his daughters with several different physicians at Michigan since then have convinced him that many of the best doctors in America are practicing within the U-M Health System. “We’ve just received a lot of good diagnoses and excellent advice,” he says. “Every experience has been fantastic.”

Allen Lichter

Mark B. Orringer

Lori J. Pierce

Just as Tom Duke keeps going back to the U-M Health System because of the care he and his family members have experienced there, those living in the Detroit metropolitan area who participated in a recent survey said good medical care and reputation mattered the most in picking a hospital.

In a survey of 550 residents in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties published June 3 in the Detroit Free Press, the U-M Health System was ranked at the top or near the top in every category of the survey, which included respondents’ choice of the health system they’d most like to use overall, for cancer care, for a life-threatening emergency, a child non-emergency, for giving birth and for cardiac care.

Michigan’s Comprehensive Cancer Center ranked first among respondents for cancer care and the U-M Health System ranked second overall for medical care.

Three of Michigan’s leading cancer specialists: Allen Lichter, M.D., Mark B. Orringer, M.D. and Lori J. Pierce, M.D., were featured in the March, 1999, issue of Good Housekeeping. They were included in a listing of the 318 “top cancer specialists for women” in the U.S., based on the nominations of 280 department chairs and section chiefs in surgical, medical and radiation oncology at major medical centers, who were not allowed to recommend any specialists from their own institutions. Allen S. Lichter appeared on both the lung and breast cancer radiation oncologists list, Mark B. Orringer on the list of lung cancer surgeons, and Lori J. Pierce on the list of breast cancer radiation oncologists.

Robertson Named Leukemia Society Scholar

Erle Robertson, Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, has been honored with the Leukemia Society of America Scholar Award. “The Scholars of the Society are highly qualified individuals who have demonstrated their abilities to conduct original research bearing on leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and myeloma,” according to the Leukemia Society. The award includes financial support of $350,000 over five years.

Robertson joined the Medical School faculty in 1997 and continues to conduct research on Epstein-Barr virus and Karposi’s Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus.

Voorhees Most Cited Author in Dermatology

John J. Voorhees, M.D., Duncan and Ella Poth Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology, is the number one cited author in dermatology based on his articles published in the 24 principal clinical and investigative journals in dermatology, according to an article in the March issue of the Archives of Dermatology.

“Citations are of course an imperfect means of measuring an author’s impact on the field,” the article states. “Still, they provide some quantification of scholarly contribution, the judgment of which is so often a highly subjective exercise. Furthermore, it seems likely that how often one’s work is cited is a better measure of the impact of the individual’s works than how many papers a person has authored.”

The study identified the 25 most often cited authors based on publications from 1981 through 1996. Articles published by Voorhees, irrespective of authorship placement, were cited 4706 times, outdistancing the second most-cited author by more than 1200 citations.

In Print

Recently published books authored or edited by members of the University Of Michigan Medical School include the following:

By Frederick A. Askari, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of internal medicine: Hepatitis C, the Silent Epidemic; The Authoritative Guide, with illustrations by Daniel S. Cutler. Published in 1999 by Plenum Publishing, New York, New York.

By Paul Carson, Ph.D., professor of radiology: Radiation Science: Uses in Medical Imaging and Therapy, a series of 18 educational modules and videos for secondary schools and colleges. Kendall/Hunt Publishing, Dubuque, Iowa.

By Bruce Carlson, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of anatomy and cell biology: the second edition of his book, Human Embryology & Developmental Biology. Published by Mosby Inc. in 1999.

Edited by Steven M. Donn, M.D., professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases: Neonatal and Pediatric Pulmonary Graphics: Principles and Clinical Applications, and Neonatal and Pediatric Pulmonary Graphics: A Bedside Guide. Futura Publishing Co., Armonk, New York, in 1998.

By Wendy R. Uhlmann, M.S., genetic counselor in the Department of Internal Medicine Section of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and clinical instructor in human genetics, Diane Baker, M.S., director of the Genetic Counseling Training Program and lecturer in Human Genetics and Epidemiology, and Jane L. Schuette, M.S., genetic counselor in pediatrics and clinical instructor in human genetics: A Guide to Genetic Counseling. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.