Dean's Update
September 13, 2024 - Aron Sousa, MD
Friends,
This is and has been a week of events for the college. We started by hosting Kevin Conroy, JD, as our third speaker in the Ambassador Peter F. Secchia Lecture Series. The series was funded and designed by the Honorable Ambassador Mr. Secchia to bring speakers to the college who would reflect and engage scientific work with an entrepreneurial spirit. Kevin, who was an undergrad at Michigan State, is the CEO and chair of the board of Exact Sciences, which is a diagnostics company focusing on cancer diagnosis. You will know them from Cologuard (sDNA-FIT). His Tuesday morning talk walked us through the combined business and scientific challenges involved in bringing Cologuard to market. It was touching, thoughtful, and visionary. Also, it was the first Secchia talk to include an SNL skit.
Kevin was incredibly generous with his time this week, and he and his family have also demonstrated their generosity, passion, and commitment to MSU with a gift to create the Tom and Lupe Izzo Endowed Professorship in Engineering and Medicine. Endowed positions like these are vital to our recruitment of talented faculty to innovate and help solve some of our most pressing challenges of today.
Kevin was the guest of honor Monday night at a dinner hosted by Joan Secchia and President Guskiewicz on the eighth floor of the Secchia Center. And after his talk on Tuesday, he visited with faculty and students in our Grand Rapid buildings. He was clearly delighted by his conversations with our faculty and students, and I was pleased to meet his father and sister who came from the Flint area to see the talk. Kevin was raised in Flint, and it turns out one of our faculty, Charles Stewart Mott Professor of Public Health Todd Lucas, PhD, uses Cologuard, among other colon cancer screening options, as part of an American Cancer Society grant to increase colon cancer screening in underserved populations in Flint. There was a special crackle in their conversation as they discussed how Todd uses Kevin’s work bringing this technology to market as part of how Todd and his team help the underserved in Kevin’s own hometown.
Colonoscopy is one of the major methods for colon cancer screening, but colonoscopy is expensive for payers and patients, who usually lose a workday to the procedure. Furthermore, colonoscopy is generally done by gastroenterologists, who are not available in many underserved communities. These problems mean tests like Cologuard, which is delivered and picked up by UPS and costs considerably less than a colonoscopy, can help boost colon cancer screening in underserved populations, whether they are urban, rural, or in between. It is in this way that health equity projects, like that of Dr. Lucas and his team, depend on the innovation and technology commercialization of diagnostic companies to address cancer disparities in underserved communities. It is notable and important that health equity is a key area of focus for Kevin and his company.
Thursday was a big day on the other side of the state, as our partners at Henry Ford Health celebrated the ground breaking of their new hospital on Grand Boulevard in Detroit. Their last hospital, the building they use still today, opened in 1915. It speaks to how well that building was built that it has survived and thrived for so long. In that old building, the providers have created world leading innovations and built programs that patients from around the world seek out for their care.
The new tower and expanded emergency department will be remarkable for the community, befitting the systems place in Detroit. Not only has Henry Ford Health been in the city for 109 years, but as other hospitals in the city closed or moved to the suburbs during the decades of struggle Detroiters have endured, Henry Ford Health not only stayed in the city but expanded its services. The system’s dedication to the city and its people has been remarkable and inspiring.
Saturday morning I will go to the Teddy Bear Health Fair at Garfield Park back again in Grand Rapids before I go to a gala in Detroit Saturday evening. If you have not been to a Teddy Bear Health Fair in the past, you should go, they are a hoot. Kids bring their bears, and other stuffed animals, in for shots and repairs and faux roentgenographs. It’s fun, the kids learn something about their health, and parents connect with local organizations and services that are set up in tents at the health fair. Kids also learn an interesting and useful set of behaviors when they help their stuffed animals get the care they need. Frankly, it’s a shrewd way to educate the young ones.
Serving the people with you,
Aron
Aron Sousa, MD, FACP
Dean, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine