Dean's Weekly Message
December 22, 2025
Dear Colleague:
A Productive Year
As 2025 draws to a close, we are celebrating many accomplishments that position
the CU Anschutz School of Medicine for a bright future. I want to thank
everyone for their dedication and service to our school and the communities
that depend on us. You have helped make a challenging year a remarkably
successful one.
School Leadership
Earlier this year, I strengthened our school’s leadership structure to better
support our faculty, accelerate progress in our core missions, and build the
infrastructure needed as we pursue ambitious goals. To do this, several of our
highly respected leaders expanded their roles.
- Vineet Chopra, MD, MSc, Executive Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs, Research Affairs, and Quality, helps align clinical excellence, research growth, and quality outcomes so faculty can do their best work in an increasingly complex environment.
- Shanta Zimmer, MD, Executive Vice Dean for Education, provides clear leadership and accountability across our education mission as we work to be an innovative place of learning for physicians and scientists.
- Leslie Berg, PhD, Senior Associate Dean for Biomedical Research, and Adit Ginde, MD, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research, are leading efforts to align and scale our biomedical and clinical research areas, ensuring the structures, processes, and resources are in place to support growth and national competitiveness.
- Naresh Mandava, MD, Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Advancement, is helping connect our vision with philanthropic resources needed to grow.
We now have a roster of top leaders who are implementing plans that will fulfill our vision of becoming a top 10 medical school. They, in turn, are building robust teams, so watch in 2026 as we continue to strengthen our school leadership team.
Funds Flow
Another major accomplishment in 2025 was forging a stronger relationship with our partner UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital with a streamlined funds flow process. In the past, the finances were a mishmash of one-off deals and sometimes outdated agreements that were under constant negotiation by individual departments.
We were constricted in our ability to define and align a strategic vision for our collective future, and you can’t implement a plan if you don’t make one. So, forging a clinical funds flow agreement was a critical top priority for all of us. This agreement brings substantial benefits:
- Reduces friction in negotiations. With a consistent formula known by both parties, we can focus our conversations on the current competitive circumstances rather than on arrangements that no longer meet our collective needs.
- Aligns our priorities with the hospital. Our investments can now focus on a future where we all thrive. We have a structure that allows us to work together to define program priorities that will benefit all. We have a clearer vision of where we are going.
- Supports faculty recruitment. The funding ensures that we attract the best faculty to our campus. To be the best school, we must hire and retain the best people. This agreement makes that possible.
- Protects our faculty and departments. For our faculty, there is ample upside opportunity that incentivizes work productivity and protects us in times of adversity.
- Promotes departmental collaboration. With a level playing field for all departments, leadership can instead focus on working together to build programs. Instead of slicing the pie into smaller pieces for individual units, we work to make a bigger pie that we can all share.
The clinical funds flow work is an ongoing project that will include Children’s Hospital Colorado in the new year. We are also working on establishing clear funds flow in our research and education missions.
Clinical Growth
Our clinical practice continued to grow. At the CU Medicine annual meeting last month, the leadership team reported many key measures of growth:
- Our faculty provided care for 4.74 million patient visits.
- Our practice annual revenue increased 7.5% to $1.73 billion.
- We posted a 4% operating margin.
- We achieved Vizient CPSC Billing Office ranking No. 5, the highest in our history.
- We were ranked No. 7 on the Vizient Ambulatory Quality and Accountability Performance Scorecard.
Brian Smith, MHA, Executive Director of CU Medicine and Senior Associate Dean for Administration and Finance, reported that our team is working hard to find ways to keep our faculty practice ahead of the pack. He and the CU Medicine team have my gratitude for their dedication and hard work.
While we continued to grow, we also improved the service our patients receive.
Vineet Chopra, MD, MSc, Executive Vice Dean for Clinical, Quality, and Research, reported at the annual meeting that we have exceeded our goals in scheduling appointments with new patients within 14 days. We’re maintaining a high degree of network integrity by referring to our faculty specialists, and we’ve improved quality so that our inpatient mortality index is in the top decile.
We also celebrated our exceptional child health faculty at Children’s Hospital Colorado. We have expanded health access through strategic partnerships in our targeted seven-state region. Our child health clinical productivity continued to grow, and our pediatric programs set national standards with the leading live donor liver transplant program, a No. 2 U.S. News ranking for cardiology, and exceptional PICU outcomes.
New Department Chairs
I had the pleasure of welcoming three new department chairs this year, and I am confident that they are going to make a huge impact on our future.
- Peter E. Fecci, MD, PhD, Neurosurgery. Dr. Fecci, a highly accomplished surgeon, investigator, and scholar, joined us in July from Duke University School of Medicine.
- Vik Bebarta, MD, Emergency Medicine. With more than a decade of extraordinary leadership on our faculty, including the creation of the powerhouse CU Anschutz Center for Combat Medicine and Battlefield (COMBAT) Research, Dr. Bebarta was selected after a national search.
- Saketh R. Guntupalli, MD, Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Guntupalli joined our faculty in 2012, and he has led robust growth in the clinical operations of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology as it became one of the largest practices in the U.S. He also was selected after a national search.
LCME Accreditation
In November, our school received full accreditation for the maximum eight-year term, recognizing and ensuring that CU medical students receive the highest-quality training in classrooms and clinical settings.
The accreditation process is a rigorous review of all aspects of medical education – curriculum, training sites, support services, and leadership – to determine whether our students are prepared to become practicing physicians with a commitment to lifelong learning.
I am very proud of the entire team for their commitment and attention to this process, and offer thanks to Executive Vice Dean for Education Shanta Zimmer, MD; LCME Faculty Lead Bonnie Kaplan, MD, MA; and project manager Kristen Hyden, MS. Their dedication and professionalism are tremendous examples of the work done by everyone at the School of Medicine every day.
Save the Date for the State of the School
We are going to celebrate these accomplishments – and many more – at the State of the School address at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, January 28, 2026, in the Elliman Conference Center in the Anschutz Health Sciences Building. Please plan to join us for the good news and the celebration of our LCME accreditation after the talk. Early next year, we’ll send registration for in-person and virtual attendance.
Child Health Research Institute Annual Report
The Colorado Child Health Research Institute has released its 2025 annual report.
The institute is a collaboration between the University of Colorado Anschutz and Children’s Hospital Colorado to solve the most challenging questions in child health. This cross-campus team of investigators, faculty members, providers, research teams, and supporting staff is committed to elevating research to improve clinical care across the lifespan.
The report offers an overview of how the institute is among the best-funded in the nation, supported by a strong mix of federal grants, philanthropic contributions, industry studies and more. Some key statistics from the report:
- Annual research funding: $192.6 million
- Unique principal investigators: 609
- Number of PIs with more than $250,000 in research funding: 186
- Number of PIs with more than $1 million in research funding: 46
- Philanthropy raised for child health research in 2024: $15.8 million
I encourage you to check out the features on some of our faculty members featured for their research, including Julie Watson, MD, and David Howell, PhD, setting standards in concussion research; Adam Green, MD, receiving a $24 million NIH grant to study pediatric radiation-induced gliomas; and Jamie Feinstein, MD, exploring how to make polypharmacy easier for caregivers and safer for patients.
These are all examples about how we, together, aspire to become the leading institute for child health research in the nation.
Faculty Updates
Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, has been awarded the Outstanding Achievement in Public Health: Building the Foundation Award by Research!America, an alliance of academic, business, and other organizations that advocate for medical, health, and scientific research by the federal government. The award recognizes Dr. Johnston and two fellow honorees for their complementary work showing that folate deficiency is the principal cause of neural-tube defects. Their work was instrumental in achieving mandated folic-acid fortification of the U.S. grain supply. This U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved fortification to date has prevented 33,000 U.S. neural-tube-defect pregnancies with a $9 billion economic benefit.
Debosmita Sardar, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, was selected as a Translational Research Scholar, which is part of the School of Medicine’s Program to Advance Physician Scientists and Translational Research. Dr. Sardar will receive up to $300,000 over four years to support her research on glial cells and epigenetic regulation. Dr. Sardar will begin her project in January, which will focus on expanding her research to study glioblastoma, a disease characterized by both glial and epigenetic dysfunction.
Recent Publications
Frank I. Scott, MD, MSCE, Associate Professor of Medicine, is first author of a living guideline on the pharmacologic management of moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease that was published by Gastroenterology in the December 2025 issue. Dr. Scott chaired the expert panel that wrote the guideline. Benjamin Click, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, is a co-author.
Alexander R. Horswill, PhD, Professor of Immunology and Microbiology and a VA-funded investigator for the Department of Veterans Affairs Eastern Colorado Healthcare System, is corresponding author of an article, “An antimicrobial daptide from human skin commensal Staphylococcus hominis protects against skin pathogens,” published December 11 by Nature Communications. Three co-authors are from our school.
Rajeev Vibhakar, MD, PhD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics, is corresponding author of an article, “Transcriptional regulation of protein synthesis by mediator kinase represents a therapeutic vulnerability in MYC-driven medulloblastoma,” published December 16 by Nature Communications. Eleven co-authors are from our campus. A phase 1 clinical trial based on the data is now in development.
Rajeev Vibhakar, MD, PhD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics, and Bethany Veo, PhD, Research Scientist in Pediatrics, are corresponding authors of an article, “Single-cell multi-omics identifies metabolism-linked epigenetic reprogramming as a driver of therapy-resistant medulloblastoma,” published November 25 by Nature Communications. Ten co-authors are from our campus.
Liselotte N. Dyrbye, MD, MPHE, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Well-being, Chief Well-being Officer, and Professor of Medicine, is a co-author of an original investigation, “Food Insecurity, Burnout, and Social Isolation Among Resident and Fellow Physicians,” published December 17 by JAMA Network Open.
Jennifer E. Adams, MD, Professor of Medicine, is corresponding author of an article, “Return on investment: a qualitative approach to understanding the value of undergraduate medical education from the perspective of health system and academic leaders,” published December 12 by Academic Medicine. The article is based on research Dr. Adams did during her Executive Leadership Academic Medicine fellowship in 2023-2024. Six co-authors are from our campus.
Mi-Hyun Nam, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology, is corresponding author of an article, “DJ-1 Protects Human Retinal Endothelial Cells From Diabetes-Related Conditions and Prevents Ischemic Damage in Mouse Retinal Capillaries,” published the November issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. Four co-authors, including Ram H. Nagaraj, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology, are from our school.
Jeremy T. Hua, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental & Occupational Health Services at National Jewish Health, is corresponding author of an article, “Quantitative lung particulate analysis links increased anthracotic pigment burden to burn pit exposure in post-9/11 veterans with distal lung disease,” published December 17 by Scientific Reports. Five co-authors are affiliated with our school.
David Olds, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, is corresponding author of a commentary, “Nurse Home-Visiting During Pregnancy and Through Child-Age Two: Taking the Long-View,” published December 16 by Pediatrics.
E. Seth Kramer, DO, MPH, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine; Melissa N. Johnson, MD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine; and Bradford Winslow, MD, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, are co-authors of an article, “Evaluation of Suspected Dementia,” published in the December issue of American Family Physician.
Medical Students Host Adaptive Toy Workshop
This fall, medical students Grace Thompson and Cabrey Allison, who spent some of their training in Colorado Springs, channeled their passion for pediatric and disability care into a day of community, education, and play.
Thompson, a fourth-year medical student preparing for an internal medicine residency, and Allison, a third-year medical student, organized an adaptive toy event with The Resource Exchange, a southern Colorado non-profit organization that works with children and adults who have a variety of disabilities, and Jaxon Engineering, based in Colorado Springs.
Grace Thompson and Cabrey Allison
With funding from Slay Community Scholars, which lends financial support to community engagement efforts by those in the CU Anschutz community, they were able to assist nearly a dozen families in adapting electronic toys to have bigger buttons, switches, and toggles to make them more accessible. The inaugural event was a success, the organizers say, and there’s hope that it will continue to help families in the future.
“This has been far and away one of the biggest highlights of my medical school experience,” Allison said. “It’s made me think a lot more about multidisciplinary care and how important it is to have those teams and be able to treat the whole person.”
Get your holiday season off to a wonderful start by checking out this terrific article about their work in the School of Medicine newsroom.
- School of Medicine Top 10 of 2025
- CU Anschutz Top 10 Stories of 2025
- Department of Medicine Top Stories of 2025
- Department of Surgery Top Stories of 2025
- CU Cancer Center Top Stories of 2025
- Emergency Medicine Top Stories of 2025
- Ophthalmology Top 10 Stories of 2025
- Top Stories of 2025 at ACCORDS
Thank you for all you’ve given this year. The care, commitment, and excellence you bring every day have made a real difference — for our patients, our learners, and for one another.
As the year comes to a close, I’m deeply grateful for this community and for the people who make this school what it is. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and I’m energized by what lies ahead.
I hope the coming weeks give you time to rest, reflect, and enjoy meaningful moments with family and friends. I look forward to continuing our work together in the year ahead.
Wishing you a happy holiday season,
John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA
Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and
Dean, University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine
The Dean’s weekly message is an email news bulletin from John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA, Dean of the CU Anschutz School of Medicine, that is distributed to inform CU Anschutz School of Medicine faculty members, staff, students and others about issues pertaining to the school’s mission of education, research, clinical care and community service.
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