Dear Colleague: 

What a whirlwind year!

I celebrated my first anniversary as Dean on July 1, and I want to thank everyone for making me feel so welcome here. During this past year, we’ve moved on many efforts that will ensure that the CU School of Medicine is Top 10 in 10 years.

Those steps have included strengthening our relationships with our campus partners UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Children’s Hospital Colorado, aligning our department leaders with goals for our mutual benefit, and reinvigorating our school’s senior leadership team. And there’s much more work to be done!

While we have faced some significant changes in the federal landscape, we will achieve our goals by working together, helping one another, investing in our programs, and inspiring others in academic medicine. We are fortunate to have strong teams who are experienced and committed to helping us through uncertain times.

Thanks again for your warm welcome and support. Together, we are going to make a lasting impact.

Stars Shine at Tribeca Film Festival
Jamie Feinstein, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics, took a star turn at the Tribeca Film Festival last month to celebrate a new documentary, Matter of Time, about efforts to find a cure of epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a group of rare diseases that cause the skin to be fragile and to blister easily.

Dr. Feinstein and his patient, 10-year-old Rowan Holler, are featured in the film, which also highlights musician Eddie Vedder’s dedication to efforts to find a cure for EB.

Jamie Feinstein, MD, MPH, left, poses for a photo with musician
Eddie Vedder, and researchers Igor Kogut, PhD, middle,
and Ganna Bilousova, PhD. 

The documentary, directed by Matt Finlin, follows Vedder through two sold out performances in Seattle in 2023 to raise funds for EB research. He and his wife Jill Vedder, founder and chairwoman of the EB Research Partnership, took an interest in finding a cure for the disease, which is often fatal, when a close family friend’s son was diagnosed with EB. The film also weaves in the stories of young people living with EB, physicians, and researchers.

In the documentary, Dr. Feinstein shares his experience as a physician caring for children, including Rowan, and how the treatment landscape has evolved during his career. Dr. Feinstein co-directs a specialized multidisciplinary clinic with Professor of Pediatric Dermatology Anna Bruckner, MD, MSCS, providing care for children and adults living with EB. Twice a month, the team comprised of up to 25 clinicians see four to six patients with EB.

“For so long, this has been a condition we’ve had to manage in a palliative manner—reactively treating wounds, pain, and infections as they arise,” he says. “Until recently, we’ve had no medicines to address the underlying disease. With the FDA approval of three new treatments in the past two years, we are light-years ahead, but it’s still not enough.”

You can read more about the documentary and our outstanding care team in this article in the School of Medicine newsroom.

Faculty Volunteers Needed by Strauss Library
Strauss Library provides access to tools aimed at helping clinicians stay current on clinical topics. The library is looking for School of Medicine faculty to share 15-30 minutes of their time (virtually or in-person) to help the library power test these tools. Submit your name if you are interested and a librarian will be in touch to schedule a meeting.

Reception for Drs. Fuhlbrigge and Buttrick
The School of Medicine is hosting a thank you reception for Anne Fuhlbrigge, MD, MA, and Peter Buttrick, MD, for their service as Senior Associate Deans for the past decade. The event is at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 17, at the Anschutz Health Sciences Building in the Elliman Conference Center. Please join us to celebrate their leadership and contributions to our campus.

Recent Publications
Matthew K. Wynia, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, is a co-author of a comment, “When are health professionals ethically obligated to engage in public advocacy?” published July 27 by The Lancet.

Jason Haukoos, MD, Professor of Emergency Medicine, is corresponding author, and Sarah E. Rowan, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director, Division of Sexual Health, HIV, and Viral Hepatitis at the Public Health Institute at Denver Health, is senior author of an original investigation, “Hepatitis C Screening in Emergency Departments: The DETECT Hep C Randomized Clinical Trial,” published July 9 by JAMA. The study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, evaluated nearly 150,000 emergency department patients across the U.S. and found that routine, non-risk-based screening was significantly more effective at identifying hepatitis C infections than traditional risk-based methods. Eight co-authors are from our campus and Denver Health.

Kirk B. Fetters, MD, Chief Fellow in the Infectious Diseases Clinical Fellowship, is corresponding author, and Joshua A. Barocas, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, is co-author of a viewpoint article, “Advocating for Maintaining Housing First Policies,” published July 3 by JAMA.

Jennifer Cooper, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, is a co-author of a perspective article, “CAR T cell therapy for children with rheumatic disease: the time is now,” published July 2 in Nature Reviews Rheumatology.

Abdelghani El Rafei, MD, MS, Cardiology Fellow, is corresponding author of an original investigation, “Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter 2 Inhibitor Use for Heart Failure in US Ambulatory Cardiovascular Care,” published July 9, by JAMA Cardiology. Four co-authors are from our campus.

Jesse D. Schold, PhD, Professor of Surgery and Professor of Epidemiology in the Colorado School of Public Health, is co-author of a research letter, “Socioeconomic Disparities in Out-of-Sequence Placement of Deceased Donor Kidneys in the US,” published July 7 by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Dmitri Simberg, PhD, Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, is corresponding author of a research article, “Enhanced immunocompatibility and hemocompatibility of nanomedicines across multiple species using complement pathway inhibitors,” published July 9 in Science Advances. Thirteen co-authors are from our campus.

Joseph A. Simonetti, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Mentorship and Education for the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative, is co-author of an original investigation, “Firearm Storage and Firearm Suicide,” published July 7 by JAMA Network Open.

Erin Wright-Kelly, DrPH, MA, Research Associate with the Injury and Violence Prevention Center at the Colorado School of Public Health, is corresponding author, and four colleagues from our campus, are co-authors of an article, “Trends in Carrying Handguns Among Florida Adolescents: 2002–2022,” published July 7 in Pediatrics.

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