FROM BISON TO BUFF

The university’s mighty mascot – the bison – features prominently in the advertisement, and I was struck by why CU feels so much like home

We buffaloes stick together. There’s power in the herd. 

I marked my one-year anniversary as Dean and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs in July and what an eventful and extraordinary year it has been! 

Since joining CU I have been impressed by the passionate commitment of our faculty, staff, and affiliates to improving care, conducting research, and training the next generation of physicians, physician assistants, physical therapists, anesthesiologist assistants, genetic counsellors, and all other clinicians in our community. 

I feel fortunate to have joined such a strong academic medical center where we committed to my goal of making CU Anschutz top 10 in 10 years. 

We have a solid foundation, strong clinical partners, and steadfast commitment from our community.  From this base, we have a tremendous opportunity to be one of the best academic medical centers in the country. 

I am excited to report some of the major successes achieved during my first year that will help us fulfill that promise. 

We have been working tirelessly to align and strengthen our programs: 

With UCHealth, we adopted a comprehensive update of the funds flow process brings our school and our hospital partner into alignment for our common goals. 

At Children’s Hospital Colorado, we are building new reporting structures that will ensure that our faculty have strong bonds with the hospital and the clinical departments. 

I have reorganized our senior leadership team at the School of Medicine to emphasize our priorities of quality, education, translational research, and philanthropic partnerships. 

Our department leaders are setting high standards for team performance, and they will be appropriately rewarded when they achieve improved results. 

We are ensuring that our faculty practice is focused on strategically growing in our community so that our patients have access closer to home when they need care. 

Our clinical departments rallied to create an emergency fund of $12 million to support research faculty whose grant funding was stalled due to federal agency transitions. 

And we celebrated major successes in all our mission areas: 

• In August, we announced that the School of Medicine is the leader of a $64 million NIH grant to establish a new consortium focused on palliative care research. Our school will be leading a multi-institutional center with 40 personnel from more than 20 institutions.
  
• Our Gates Institute provided CAR T-cell therapy to the 50th patient enrolled in an investigator-led clinical trial for patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia who have relapsed or whose disease didn’t respond to standard treatments.
• Our school received a $1 million endowment to support one of the country’s best programs for training physicians who serve rural communities across the country. 

These results are few examples of our CU Anschutz stampede to the Top 10. We are just getting started! 

With warm regards,