LEXINGTON CLINIC ANNOUNCES 2017 BOARD OF DIRECTORS
LEXINGTON At Lexington Clinic’s annual Board of Directors meeting the following officers were elected to serve for the year:
President – Stephen C. Umansky, MD
Vice-President – Michael T. Cecil, MD
Secretary – Kimberly A. Hudson, MD
Treasurer – Andrew C. McGregor, MD
Other members of the board include Haider Abbas, MD, Kyle Childers, MD, Shailendra Chopra, MD, Robert Davenport, MD, Jamil Farooqui, MD, and Gregory Osetinsky, MD.
Mr. Nick Rowe and Mr. Alan Stein were also added to this year’s board. They are the first non-physicians to sit on the Lexington Clinic’s Board of Directors and were selected because of their leadership roles in the community.
Mullett Receives ACS Quality of Life Award
LEXINGTON The American Cancer Society (ACS) recently honored University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center surgeon Timothy W. Mullett, MD, FACS, with the Lane W. Adams Quality of Life Award. He was one of six recipients chosen for the national honor for his leadership in serving the complex needs of cancer patients and their families.
The ACS Quality of Life Award honors persons who routinely excel in providing care to their patients experiencing cancer, going beyond the bounds of their duties. Lane W. Adams emphasized the importance of a “warm hand of service” during his vice presidency of the American Cancer Society. This award represents Adams’ credence to serve and enhance others being.
Mullett has committed his time to lung screening and education by chartering Lung Screening Excellence in Kentucky and serving as co-investigator at Kentucky Lung Education Awareness Detection and Survivorship. As a stage 4 liver cancer survivor, he approaches patient care uniquely in comparison to his colleagues. Mullett is known for his devotion to providing availability to quality care for underrepresented citizens in Kentucky by working with nonprofit, government and medical groups.
Mullett currently serves as medical director for both the Markey Cancer Center Affiliate and Research Networks. He has also served as a colonel in the Army Reserves, with deployments in 2004 and 2012. Shailendra Chopra, MD, Robert Davenport, MD, Jamil Farooqui, MD, and Gregory Osetinsky, MD.
Morring Joins KentuckyOne Health Surgery Associates London
LONDON Don Morring, MD, has joined Kentucky One Health Surgery Associates, located at 1406 West 5th Street in London. Morring received his bachelor’s degree from Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina in 2005, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Meharry Medical College in Tennessee in 2010. In 2016, he graduated from Marshall University’s Department of Surgery in West Virginia. Morring has received honors and awards in research and academics throughout undergraduate and medical school, including the Excellence in Leadership award from the United States Marine Corps in 2001. He is certified in advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS), advanced trauma life support (ATLS), and basic life support (BLS). He is a member of the American College of Surgeons.
Schmidt Receives NIH Grant to Study How Gut Microbiota Affects Malaria
LOUISVILLE The bugs in our gut can help fight bugs from outside our bodies.
Nathan Schmidt, PhD, has published research showing that microbes in the gut of mice can affect the severity of illness suffered from infection with Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria. To pursue this research further, Schmidt, assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the University of Louisville School of Medicine, has received a five-year research grant of $2.6 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the National Institutes of Health. In his new research, Schmidt intends to determine which microbes are responsible for protecting against illness and to learn more about the mechanism behind that protection.
“Now we are hoping to determine which bacteria or metabolites are interacting to determine the severity or lack of severity of illness in the individual,” Schmidt said. “If we can identify the bacteria, it raises hope that we can target those mechanisms to prevent severity of the disease, thereby reducing illness and death from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Globally, malaria afflicts more than 200 million people and causes more than 400,000 deaths each year, with 90 percent of cases occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. However, many more individuals are infected with the Plasmodium parasite but do not become seriously ill. Schmidt’s research aims to learn more about why some people become seriously ill while others do not.
In 2016, Schmidt published research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) revealing that mice having one community of microbiota colonizing their gut were less susceptible to severe infection from Plasmodium than mice with a different community of microbiota.
Schmidt is one of a growing number of researchers investigating links between gut microbiota and disease across the U of L Health Sciences Center campus.
Hospice of the Bluegrass is Now Bluegrass Care Navigators
LEXINGTON Hospice of the Bluegrass is now Bluegrass Care Navigators, the company announced February 1.
“Our organization was founded as Community Hospice of Lexington in 1978,” said Liz Fowler, CEO. “As we expanded our service regions to other parts of the state, we changed our name to Hospice of the Bluegrass in 1986,” Fowler added. “And that name has served us well, until now. Our company has grown to provide a wide range of services in addition to hospice care, including private nursing, case management, palliative care, and grief care.”
The Lexington-based nonprofit, which provides services throughout Kentucky, chose the name Bluegrass Care Navigators because it now guides and provides care to more people in more ways.
The company’s service line names will include Bluegrass Extra Care, Bluegrass Transitional Care, Bluegrass Palliative Care, Bluegrass Hospice Care, and Bluegrass Grief Care.
Baptist Health Lexington Awarded Advanced Stroke Certification
LEXINGTON Baptist Health Lexington has earned Advanced Certification for Comprehensive Stroke Centers from The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
Baptist Health Lexington is one of only four healthcare organizations in Kentucky to hold this certification. To be eligible, hospitals must demonstrate compliance with stroke-related standards as a Primary Stroke Center and meet additional requirements, including those related to advanced imaging capabilities, 24/7 availability of specialized treatments, and providing staff with the unique education and competencies to care for complex stroke patients.
To earn this certification, Baptist Health Lexington underwent a rigorous onsite review, during which Joint Commission experts evaluated compliance with stroke-related standards and requirements.
Williams Speaks at First International Conference of Hospital Medicine
LEXINGTON During a recent trip to Taiwan, Mark V. Williams, MD, director of the Center for Health Services Research (CHSR), had the opportunity to share his expertise as a hospitalist and researcher with colleagues in Taiwan.
Williams was invited by Dr. Ming-Chin Yang, National Taiwan University’s associate dean of the College of Public Health, and Dr. Nin-Chieh Hsu, a practicing hospitalist in Taiwan, to speak at the January 7 forum of hospital medicine at the first International Conference of Hospital Medicine.
Williams focused his presentation on the evolution of hospital medicine and the roles hospitalists play now and the role they will play in the future. With the overall goal of inspiring the planning and implementation of hospital medicine in Taiwan, this conference focused on the challenges, opportunities, and future of the field.
Williams has been the director of the Center for Health Services Research since 2014. He also serves as chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at UK HealthCare. More than 50 hospitalists in the division care for more than 200 hospitalized patients per day at UK HealthCare
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