Dean's Weekly Message

January 27, 2025

Dear Colleague: 

Last week, the federal government implemented a series of restrictions on activities from the National Institutes of Health. These include the cancellation of on-going activities such as grant review panels, advisory council meetings, and training workshops. Additionally, there is a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and a ban on travel by governmental officials. 

Please know, our legislative teams, campus leadership, and the CU System office are closely monitoring the situation. Additional details will be shared as they become available. You can find the latest updates at www.cu.edu/office-government-relations/federal-relations.

Brief pauses in governmental activities when a new administration takes over are a standard practice. In the meantime, let’s continue to stay focused on our research and continue writing grants for the upcoming cycle. We remain advocates for your work because medical research is central to our institutional mission and impacts all that we do: to educate, to innovate, and to improve human lives.

state of the school logo presentation with small photo of Fitzsimmons building.

State of the School
Please join us on Wednesday, January 29, for the 2025 State of the School Address.

We’ll be gathering at 4 p.m. in the Elliman Conference Center in the Anschutz Health Sciences Building. This is an opportunity for us to celebrate accomplishments of the past year.

It’s also time for us to begin our journey to being Top 10 in 10 years!

Thanks to valuable community support and amazing talent on our campus, we have a tremendous opportunity to be one of the best academic medical centers in the country.

Let’s go fulfill our destiny!

Recent Publications
Lotte N. Dyrbye, MD, MHPE, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Chief Well-being Officer, is corresponding author of an invited commentary published January 21 by JAMA Internal Medicine that responds to a heart-wrenching story in the same issue by the parents of Jack Ruddell, MD, who died by suicide. She calls for a multipronged approach, stakeholder participation, and shared responsibility, along with a commitment to outcome measurement and iterative action.

Cathy J. Bradley, PhD, Dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and Deputy Director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, is corresponding author of an original investigation published January 10 by JAMA Health Forum that addresses whether patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage, compared to those enrolled in traditional Medicare, are less likely to be prescribed a high-cost drug for cancer treatment. Three colleagues from our campus are co-authors.

Robert H. Eckel, MD, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, is a member of a global Commission on Clinical Obesity that published a report in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology on January 14 that calls for redefining obesity. The group’s revised definition focuses on how excess body fat, a measure called adiposity, affects the body, rather than relying only on body mass index. A news article in Nature published January 14 describes the commission’s report.

Suchitra Rao, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, is a co-author of an article published January 21 by Nature Communications that describes a cohort study of racial and ethnic differences in post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents in the United States.

Deborah Parra-Medina, PhD, MPH, Executive Director of the Center for Health Equity and Professor of Family Medicine, is co-author of an article published in late December by Nutrients that studies the impact of diabetes self-management education and support programs in Hispanic church settings.

Lawrence A. Haber, MD, Professor of Clinical Practice of Medicine and member of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Denver Health, is corresponding author of a Viewpoint article published January 22 by JAMA that addresses the consequences of climate change for people in carceral settings.

Raul M. Torres, PhD, Professor of Immunology and Microbiology, and Kimberly N. Kremer, Senior Instructor of Immunology and Microbiology, are corresponding authors of an original research article published January 16 by Frontiers in Immunology that shows liver sinusoidal endothelial cells regulate the balance between hepatic immunosuppression and immunosurveillance. Ten co-authors are from our campus.

Michael T. Brown, PhD student in the Molecular Biology program, and Michael A. McMurray, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, are co-authors of a review article, “Stepwise order in protein complex assembly: approaches and emerging themes,” published January 15 by Open Biology.

Katlin H. Zent, a PhD student in the Neuroscience Program, and Mark L. Dell’Acqua, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology, are authors of a research article published January 22 by The Journal of Neuroscience. The article improves understanding of the synapse-to-nucleus signaling mechanisms mediating activation of the transcription factor CREB (cAMP-response element binding protein). The findings could provide insights for understanding the mechanism underlying multiple nervous system disorders characterized by altered cognition.

Tim Lahm, MD, Professor of Medicine at the School of Medicine and Professor in the Division of Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at National Jewish Health, is corresponding author of a review article published January 8 by American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology that explores the evolving understanding of lung endothelial cells heterogeneity, particularly through the lens of single-cell RNA sequencing technologies.

Mark Earnest, MD, PhD, Division Head of General Internal Medicine, is author of a Perspective article, “Schrödinger’s Cancer,” published January 11 by The New England Journal of Medicine. The article is a meditation on how Dr. Earnest postponed medical care he knew he needed, giving him better insight into why his own patients might behave the same way. As he writes, “… a test is never a just a test.”

Faculty Updates
David Schwartz, MD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Immunology, has been named Associate Dean for Translational Sciences. In this role, Dr. Schwartz will continue to oversee training and career-development for physicians and translational scientists interested in research careers and scientific program development.

Laura Strom, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology, has been named the inaugural holder of the Thor F. Berg Endowed Chair in Epilepsy. The Office of Advancement announced earlier this month that John Berg made the gift of an endowed chair in honor of his late brother Thor, who lived with medically refractory epilepsy and autoimmune conditions and who contributed to the mission of improving access to cutting-edge care for this population.

David Arciniegas, MD, Professor of Neurology, has been honored by the International Brain Injury Association with the creation of the Zasler-Arciniegas Lecture. The inaugural lecture will be delivered during the 2025 opening plenary of the biennial World Congress on Brain Injury in Montreal in March. Between 2005 and 2022, Dr. Nathan Zasler and Dr. Arciniegas served as the fourth and fifth chairpersons of the association.

In Memoriam
Joel Yager, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, died in late December. Family, friends, and colleagues paid tribute in a service on Dec. 26, 2024. Dr. Yager started his academic career at the University of California, San Diego before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles. where he served as the Director of Residency Education and the Associate Chair for Education. After UCLA, he was Vice Chair of Education for the Department of Psychiatry and Vice Chair of Education and Academic Affairs for the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Dr. Yager joined the University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty in 2008. Dr. Yager is remembered as a prolific scholar, an impassioned  jazz pianist, and a devoted husband, father of two accomplished children, and grandfather to seven wonderful grandchildren.

Michael Wachs, MD, Professor of Surgery and Chief of Abdominal Transplant Surgery at Children’s Hospital Colorado, died January 17. He joined the pediatric transplant program at Children's  Colorado in 1995 and helped it become one of the most successful pediatric transplant centers in the nation. In partnership with the University of Colorado, he helped to build one of the largest pediatric living donor transplant programs in the nation. He attended Harvard University for undergraduate studies, received his doctorate from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and completed his surgery residency at University Health Center of Pittsburgh, where he was fortunate to work with Dr. Thomas Starzl. An obituary published this month includes additional information about Dr. Wachs’s life.

David Fullerton, MD, Professor of Surgery and former Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, died Dec. 15, 2024. Dr. Fullerton retired in June 2024. He had been active in many professional organizations, including serving as President of the Western Thoracic Surgical Association from 2008-09 and as president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons from 2014-15. For the American Board of Thoracic Surgeons, he served as a director for six years and then as the Executive Director from 2016-2023. Dr. Fullerton loved to travel to Nepal with his peers to operate in Katmandu and Pokhara. He will be remembered by family and friends for his calm demeanor, dry sense of humor, commitment to education, and mentorship of hundreds of medical students, residents and colleagues. A Celebration of Life will be held in June. An obituary published earlier this month includes additional information about Dr. Fullerton’s life.

Joel Yager, MD; Michael Wachs, MD; David Fullerton, MD

Joel Yager, MD; Michael Wachs, MD; David Fullerton, MD

Diploma in Climate Medicine
With wildfires blazing in Los Angeles and blizzard warnings in Louisiana this month, it is timely to consider the need to get a better understanding of climate conditions and their impact on human health.

Here at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, we are leaders on the topic.

Last September, a group of 13 clinicians from across the United States became the first cohort to graduate from the our Diploma in Climate Medicine program, a comprehensive professional development program training leaders in climate and health policy, communication, and environmental justice within the Climate & Health Program at CU.

The Diploma in Climate Medicine, which launched in 2022, is a 300-hour continuing medical education program. Five certificates covering a broad range of content make up the program, including foundations in climate medicine, sustainable health care, disaster resilience and response, community resilience, and global challenges.

This article in our newsroom profiles offers insight into the program, which equips health care practitioners with leadership and practical skills to advocate for climate-resilient, patient-centered policies.

Registration for the 2025 Diploma in Climate Medicine is open now, with options for all five certificates. The next certificate, Community Resilience, begins in February. 
The first cohort of graduates from the CU Diploma in Climate Medicine

The first cohort of graduates from the CU Diploma in Climate Medicine

Have a good week,

John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA
Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and
Dean, University of Colorado School of Medicine


  

The Dean’s weekly message is an email news bulletin from John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA, Dean of the CU School of Medicine, that is distributed to inform University of Colorado 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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