The latest published research from College of Human Medicine faculty.
As we reflect on 2021, we asked our students to share their personal highlights as medical students this year. Read just a few of the many inspiring stories.
This is the end of the semester, a remarkable semester in which we have successfully taught in person throughout. In the medical education program, we have been teaching in clinics and simulation for nearly all of the pandemic. But this semester our large and small group courses were also in person.
This is the end of the semester, a remarkable semester in which we have successfully taught in person throughout. In the medical education program, we have been teaching in clinics and simulation for nearly all of the pandemic. But this semester our large and small group courses were also in person.
Feeling stuck? You’re not alone. In a recent mindful popup session, I mentioned my own sense of stuck-ness and was interested to hear from several of the participants that it had struck a chord. What’s going on?
In the last week, I’ve had a number of people asking about the omicron variant of COVID-19, and what it all means. There are a lot of opinions and preliminary data swirling around the interwebs, and while much of it gives one reason for hope, as of today, there is still too much uncertainty to say anything with conviction…except that there is a lot of uncertainty.
This week I have been struck and saddened by senseless, preventable deaths in our communities. The horrific school shooting in Southeast Michigan resulting in four deaths returns our nation to the public health challenges of guns, mental health, and school safety.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
Theresa Couch, research administrator in the Health Colleges Research Services, was honored by the Society of Research Administrators International with the “Future of the Field” award.
This is a short work week for those of us not on call, or on service, or keeping animals healthy, or backing up our infrastructure, or working security for the college. There are a lot of people in a medical college who continue working over weekends and holidays, and the rest of us depend on all of them.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to witness an open mind. The willingness to consider a different perspective and a subsequent thirst for more exposure to varying points of view was an honor to witness.
Second-year College of Human Medicine student Amanda Ziminski reflects on the important role her heritage has played in her journey into medicine and shares why Native American Heritage Month is so important.
Somehow it has happened again, Michigan has one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. Our hospital partners are being inundated; elective surgeries requiring hospitalization are being delayed once more.
Congratulations to the students, residents, faculty and alumni inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society Gamma Chapter.
By and large, I try to keep our in memoriam news in the obituary section of the college’s website, but this last week, we lost Ralph Watson, MD, and I am going to make use of the interim dean’s prerogative to say a few words about Ralph.
Congratulations to the recipients of the College of Human Medicine's 2021 Faculty Awards! Among those honored was Nigel Paneth, MD, MPH, who received the Lester J. Evans, MD, Distinguished Service Award, November 10.
Ralph E. Watson, MD, passed away peacefully on November 3, 2021, while in Houston, surrounded and supported by his family.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
This week and last, I have been rounding with the internal medicine teams. Anyone who knows me knows how much I enjoy my time as an attending on the MSU internal medicine service.
Have you given any thought to self-compassion lately? Maybe it’s time.
This week and last, I have been rounding with the internal medicine teams. Anyone who knows me knows how much I enjoy my time as an attending on the MSU internal medicine service.
Ira Gewolb, MD, passed away October 20, 2021. An internationally recognized leader in the field of neonatology, Dr. Gewolb served as professor in the College of Human Medicine Department of Pediatrics and Human and chief of the Division of Neonatology from 2004 until his retirement in 2019.
One of the core projects for educational programs is accreditation. It is always a lot of work, and it takes a special team to bring the energy and enthusiasm required to successfully get a program accredited. Our Master of Public Health degree program (MPH) has that team.
As of now, additional jabs with Moderna and J&J vaccines are under discussion but are not yet available. This is a complex subject, and to help discuss the data and the reasoning behind the push for third shots, I’ve invited Keith English, MD, chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development to discuss the topic with me.
MSU is celebrating Homecoming this week. After 18 months of pandemic COVID-19 and several months of endemic COVID-19, every time I return to one of our workplaces, it feels like a homecoming.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
To honor Women in Medicine Month, several alumni wrote about women who have inspired and impacted their careers in medicine.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to witness an open mind. The willingness to consider a different perspective and a subsequent thirst for more exposure to varying points of view was an honor to witness.
This is the last Friday of Women in Medicine Month, and as for the prior weeks of September, I have turned over the Dean’s Update and the Town Hall to an alumnus to write about a woman in medicine who inspired them. This week, our author is Lisa McElroy, MD, MS (CHM ’09).
The Deans of Michigan's medical schools authored this op ed in the Detroit Free Press.
William Smyth Abbett, PhD, of Okemos, Michigan, passed away on Saturday, September 18, 2021, at the age of 79. In 1991 Dr. Abbett became the third dean of the College of Human Medicine, a position he held until 2000.
This week falls within both Women in Medicine Month and National Hispanic Heritage Month, and keeping with my practice this month, I have turned the update over to one of our alumni. This week, Dr. Herminia Bierema (CHM ’84) is writing for me. Dr. Bierema is a wonderful pediatrician at Paint Creek Pediatrics in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
This is our second week of Women in Medicine Month, and, rather than writing about women in medicine myself, I am turning over the bulk of the update to College of Human Medicine women alumni writing brief pieces about women in medicine who inspired them. This week, Janet Osuch, MD (CHM ‘79, ’00), has written a lovely piece about fellow cancer surgeon Dr. Susan Love.
September is Women in Medicine Month, and while I thought about writing about women in medicine in the update each week of the month, I thought it was probably better to ask some women to write about women in medicine each week. First up is Marsha D. Rappley, MD.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
For Anthony Bonilla-Salmeron, it was when he nearly died from a ruptured appendix at the age of 12. For Aghdas Movassaghi it was her grandmother's diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Those events sent each on a course that, despite many obstacles, brought them to the College of Human Medicine to begin their journeys to care for the underserved.
As you all know, Barbara Forney is leaving CHM for the Office of Health Sciences with some small piece of retirement as a part of the transition. We are taking this as a time to integrate faculty affairs and development with our academic and staff human resources teams.
I signed up to participate a half marathon in September and have been training for weeks. Each time I run, many lessons come into my mind that are applicable to life in general.
I happened to talk to leaders at several of the state’s hospital systems this week. And while COVID-19 has not been a major problem in our hospitals for a couple of months, adequate staffing has been a struggle. They each have hundreds of openings for people in nursing and allied health professions – the folks who make a hospital run.
This week, we welcomed 190 Early Clinical Experience (ECE) students to the College of Human Medicine. While last year orientation was entirely virtual, this year we all gathered our masked selves in Life Sciences A133 as in decades before.
Honglei Chen, MD, PhD, has been named a Michigan State University Foundation Professor for his outstanding research into the epidemiology of aging and neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s Disease.
College of Human Medicine students in the Latino Medical Student Association and the Student National Medical Association are teaching and inspiring kids participating in Baxter Community Center's Youth Mentoring Program.
Andrew Kim created the podcast Get to Know to meet and learn about his classmates during the pandemic, when in-person learning was very limited. His subjects are varied: a classmate who combines his interest in art and fashion with medicine, another who studied political philosophy before deciding on a career in medicine, and one who enrolled at age 40 after serving as a Green Beret medic.
"The future of medicine is bold and bright with you at the helm," said Emily Bush in her remarks to fellow Gold Humanism Honor Society members at the recent induction ceremony. Congratulations to the 30 students and four faculty who joined the society this year.
This week I had the pleasure of gathering with the good folks in Academic Affairs to recognize and celebrate ten colleagues who retired over the course of the pandemic.
By now most of you know that MSU has moved to a mask and vaccine mandate for students AND faculty and staff. The mask mandate is just like our world a few months ago, except there will be more people in our offices and classrooms.
It’s time to talk about teaching. I did some regular, olde tyme teaching in a real classroom this week at the hospital during in-person didactics for internal medicine residents. And, on my last day of service, a Middle Clinical Experience student joined our team, which meant I got to help someone hear some of their first heart murmurs.
As dedicated readers of my updates will know, I am in the midst of two weeks of hospital service. Helping residents care for patients in the hospital is one of the best parts of my job – being with the patients and their families is emotionally very meaningful.
What a difference a few months make. This week I started my fortnight of rounding at the hospital, and my team’s census includes only one patient with COVID-19. When I started rounding in April, half of the patients assigned to the team had or were recovering from COVID-19.
We are fifteen months post initial shut down. After a year that was odd for all of us (to say the least) and experienced differently by many, several state restrictions have been rescinded.
Andrew Michael Michelakis, MD, PhD, age 93, passed away June 28, 2021. He came to the College of Human Medicine in 1974, where he served as professor of pharmacology/toxicology.
In 2019, when I became interim dean the second time, I started visiting clinics to meet people and to inquire about quality and safety efforts. Up until the pandemic, I was pretty consistently visiting clinics, and I’ve started doing those again including some visits as part of MSU Health Care’s leadership rounds effort.
This weekend is Juneteenth, the closest thing the country has had to a holiday celebrating the end of slavery. It’s hard to understand how it took so long to establish this as a holiday, but the lack of a widespread celebration is another piece of the subtle, or not too subtle, racism in society.
This week we welcomed two new cyclotrons to Grand Rapids for the Doug Meijer Medical Innovation Building. These machines and the attached radiopharmaceutical producing units will help provide cutting edge therapy for cancer, as well as research and medical opportunities for many conditions.
President Stanley met with our Division of Public Health faculty, medical students, and MSU Extension educators, visited the Hurley Children’s Clinic, met with legislators, and generally got to experience the amazing work our people do with the people of Flint.
This week last year, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. In the time since, I hope we have held on to the energy and dedication that was so apparent then.
Larry Charleston, IV, MD, was recently recruited as a professor and director of the Headache and Facial Pain Division in the Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology. His work will focus on patient care, teaching, research and advocacy. He continues to encourage more funding for research into head and facial pain, including into disparities in care for many patients.
Among its peers, the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology received some of the highest total funding for research from the National Institutes of Health last year, a recent report found.
Over the last month or so, my conversations with chairs, community leaders, and faculty have included a spontaneous turn toward the future and future transitions. It may or may not be a real phenomenon, but it sure seems like people are deeply considering retirements and changes to their work focus as we come out of the depths of the pandemic.
Medical researchers have long known of a link between endometriosis and infertility in women, but precisely how the two are related remains unknown. But now a team that includes Michigan State University researchers, backed by a federal grant, hopes to solve that mystery and find possible treatments.
This week, our teams are ramping up efforts to begin returning more people to our campuses as the state has surpassed the governor’s first vaccination milestone – 55% of people eligible have been vaccinated.
There is cautious optimism about the months ahead based on current trends. Along with optimism, there is a vague pervasive anxiety about how to navigate the times ahead.
This month, we congratulate 182 graduates on entering the physician workforce. Go Green. Go White. Go Forth! See highlights from the celebration.
College of Human Medicine researchers have received a National Institutes of Health grant to study the connection between a gene important for normal cell survival and endometriosis, a painful disease which affects one in 10 women of reproductive age. The disease also has a significant economic impact, estimated at $95 billion annually in the U.S. in lost wages and medical expenses.
I have been following the great trauma and tragedy unfolding in India as the latest COVID-19 surge courses through cities and countryside. Like here, the virus is a mindless bit of chemistry, and its onslaught lays bare the structures, struggles, inequities, and politics of society and community.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
The core of this physician care, and the backbone of care at any teaching hospital, is the residents. I have a great team and they have done an excellent job for the patients and have kept me out of trouble too.
The conviction of George Floyd’s murderer on all counts provides hope but not resolution or solution to racism in society…including racism in health and medicine.
Thomas O'Halloran, PhD, recently joined the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and Chemistry. Through a MSU Foundation grant, he will conduct high-risk, high-reward research into new inorganic compounds that could lead to a treatment for certain types of blood, breast, and brain cancers.
MSU College of Human Medicine and Mott Community College have agreed to establish a cooperative program of premedical/medical education by which MCC students who transfer as undergraduate premedical students to Michigan State University will have the opportunity to be granted an early assurance for admission to the College of Human Medicine.
After weeks and months of starting with COVID-19 in a dean’s update, I thought I would start with some celebrations this week.
Three student essays were chosen for the 2021 Annie Li Yang Student Essay Contest. Emily Brereton won first prize for her essay “Becoming a Doctor.” Second prize was awarded to Eunice Im for the essay “Seeing People” and third place to Karren Wong for her essay “The Art and Science of Medicine.”
George Vande Woude, PhD, Van Andel Institute’s founding research director, passed away April 13, 2021. He was a world-renowned scientist whose storied career revolutionized the understanding of cancer.
I hope you and yours are safe. Michigan leads the country in COVID-19 as a hot spot. As of today, 13 of the 15 “hottest” metro areas in the country are in Michigan. Similarly, 13 of the 20 metro areas with the fastest increase in cases are in Michigan.
College of Human Medicine researchers have received a National Institutes of Health grant to study the connection between a gene important for normal cell survival and endometriosis, a painful disease which affects one in 10 women of reproductive age. The disease also has a significant economic impact, estimated at $95 billion annually in the U.S. in lost wages and medical expenses.
The COVID-19 outbreak around us is real, and the surge is big enough and bad enough that I am not going to write about anything else today.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
Several students share their experiences leading up to the Match, their Match Day celebrations, what they are looking forward to in residency and their advice for future medical students going through the process.
After a year of waiting, waiting some more, and asking ourselves ‘when it will end?’ there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
MSU All-University Awards honored Ade Olomu, MD, from the Department of Medicine with the William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award, and research specialist Madeleine Lenski, from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatics, received a Distinguished Academic Staff.
I want to start this week by expressing my sorrow and anger over the shootings in Georgia, which killed mostly Asian women. Clearly, discrimination, xenophobia, harassment, and violence against Asian/Pacific Island Americans (APIA) are to be condemned by everyone in the college and our university.
Gold Humanism Honor Society members Emmanuella Joseph and Andrew-Huy Dang organized this year’s Thank a Resident Day for all seven campuses with virtual “thank you” cards designed to send to residents along with Starbucks gift cards.
Callie Langenderfer, who oversees psychiatry clerkships for the Colleges of Human Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine, has received national recognition and honored with the 2021 Excellence in Clerkship Administration Award.
It has been a year since we moved most of the college online after the first COVID-19 cases were identified in the area. Our educational program moved online literally overnight, our teams brought up telehealth in weeks, and our students were back in their clinics faster than most schools in the country.
Among the many tired clichés that have been used about getting through this pandemic, is “this is a marathon not a sprint.” This got me thinking – a good metaphor for where we are now is the “wall” that runners hit.
Across the country, College of Human Medicine students, faculty and alumni continue to do their part to combat COVID-19. They share their stories about receiving the vaccine and helping with vaccine administration, nasal swabbing and contact tracing as part of the community health pandemic response throughout the state.
As our weather turns warmer and the COVID-19 outlook improves with the addition of a third vaccine, I think it is prudent to remain vigilant and careful.
Awards, faculty and student news, along with other college updates.
This week, the COVID-19 death toll in the US passed 500,000 lives lost. That is a nearly unfathomable number of people lost in less than a year – slightly more than the population of the Lansing metro area.
I hope you and yours are safe and well. Some members of our college have families in the communities hard hit by the most recent winter storm and frigid temperatures, and some of us recall the difficulty of living through prolonged power outages.
We have made it through a spring, a summer, a fall and a good part of a winter since the first Stay Home Stay Safe order.
I have to admit to growing optimism about our overall progress in confronting the pandemic. The vaccines have been very safe and many of them are remarkably effective. The more people we can vaccinate quickly, the better our chances of really pushing down the pandemic.
Pediatrician Jenny Bush, MD, participates in Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine ENSEMBLE Study. Lead investigators for the study in West Michigan are Eric Achtyes, MD, director of the college's Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, and Leslie Pelkey, MD, chief medical officer for Cherry Health.
Alison Bernstein has received an Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
This is one of the first weeks in a long time when my schedule and meetings were not really dominated by the pandemic. And because my job usually runs about 3-9 months ahead of current events, I take that as a good sign.
University Distinguished Professors Asgi Fazleabas and Provost Teresa Woodruff have been honored as Distinguished Fellows by the Society for the Study of Reproduction.
Sean Valles and Karen Kelly-Blake were appointed leadership positions in the Center of Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences.
A three-part series sharing the stories of the College of Human Medicine's people behind the scenes whose hard work and long hours enabled the university to launch the Spartan Early Detection program.
This week, MSU and Henry Ford Health System signed and announced a 30-year partnership agreement. The partnership focuses on developing innovative research, education, and clinical programs that will advance health and help address health disparities and DEI concerns.
What a week! We had a wonderful MLK event with Dr. Furr-Holden as one of the speakers. She discussed the differences between race and racism, health disparities and health inequity, equity and assurance of access to health.
As we awaited the end of 2020 and were hoping for brighter days ahead, 2021 had other plans.
As I watch the political crisis and the pandemic reach historic crescendos at a national level, I want to make sure we focus on what we are doing locally to keep people safe and healthy.
Our country struggles with truth telling, and it is pretty hard to advance the modern enterprise of providing for the general welfare when telling the truth about COVID-19, racism, climate change, and the elections is, somehow, a challenge.