Dear colleague: 

The State of the School address will be 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27, in the Hensel Phelps Auditorium West in the Research 1 North building. All are invited. For those off campus, there will be live broadcasts at Denver Health, National Jewish, the Denver VA Medical Center and on the University of Colorado Denver campus. We will review the past year and the opportunities ahead of us. We will also be announcing the four Transformational Research Funding projects that have been selected. I look forward to seeing you there.

The School of Medicine Executive Committee welcomed two new department chairs at its meeting last Tuesday. Vesna Todorovic, MD, PhD, MBA, chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, joined us for her first meeting. Brian Kavanagh, MD, MPH, who has been serving as the interim chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology since October 2014, has been named chair of the department. We are pleased to have both in these leadership roles.

On Friday, Jan. 22, I joined Chancellor Don Elliman and Naresh Mandava, MD, chair of the Department of Ophthalmology, to announce and celebrate the Doni Solich Family Endowed Chair in Ocular Stem Cell Research. Such gifts are essential for providing an academic environment where talented investigators can focus on their research and make discoveries that improve patients’ lives. The chair is named after the mother of George Solich, who is president and CEO of FourPoint Energy. Doni and more recently George’s wife, Carol, have been patients of Naresh. The Solich family has donated generously to several University programs, including the Leeds School of Business in Boulder, the J.P. Morgan Center for Commodities at the University of Colorado Denver Business School and the School of Medicine’s Depression Center. We are grateful for their support. The department is currently in the process of recruiting the inaugural holder of the chair.

The Office of Student Life will be moving into Building 500 on Tuesday, Jan. 26, occupying the space on the first floor that formerly housed the CU bookstore. This move will make that office more accessible to all students and will facilitate closer working relationships between the Office of Student Life and the other educational components of Undergraduate Medical Education. There will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony at noon Wednesday, Feb. 10, to celebrate the relocation.

CUdoctors.com has been overhauled with an improved provider search function and a more attractive and mobile-friendly design. It also has a simple method to update profiles. Beginning last week, providers are able to login with their University credentials and update their CUdoctors.com profile. Any questions or concerns should be sent to Drew Redfield, web and communications manager, University Physicians, Inc., at 303-493-8330 or Andrew.Redfield@upicolo.org.

The balloting for 5280 magazine’s Top Doctors went live on Friday, Jan. 22. Typically, more than half of the list is comprised of physicians who are on the School of Medicine faculty. Physicians can visit www.5280.com and click on the Top Doctors button at the top of the column on the right-hand side of the page to get to the login page. Every eligible physician living/practicing in the metro area (Adams, Denver, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Boulder, Jefferson, and Douglas counties) can login to vote with his or her full first name, last name, physician license number, and a valid email address. Balloting runs through March 11. In addition, physicians who are members of Doximity as of Dec. 11, 2015, should watch for an email in February asking them to participate in U.S. News and World Report’s 2016 Best Hospitals physician survey.

The CU School of Medicine Clinical Effectiveness and Patient Safety (CEPS) Small Grants Program has been funding quality improvement projects at University of Colorado Hospital since 2007.  In collaboration with Graduate Medical Education, this year the program is expanding to create a new CEPS Small Grants Program for Residents and Fellows. This program is intended to encourage trainees to become leaders in innovative quality and safety initiatives, as well as to promote faculty development of skills in mentoring trainees in these projects. Letters of Intent are due Sunday, March 6.

Congratulations to four members of the Department of Family Medicine – Corey Lyon, DO, Thomas Staff, MD, MPH, Stephanie Gold, MD, and Cleveland Piggott, MD, MPH, who have been elected to the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians Board of Directors.

Have a good week,

John J. Reilly, Jr., MD

Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and
Dean, School of Medicine