Impact

With the arrival of spring comes a time of tremendous activity for UTMB—opening a new hospital, moving some of our clinics to improve access and continuing expansion and renovation work in League City and Galveston. Please stay tuned in this and future issues of Impact to learn more about these projects, which are so important for the long-term success of our mission.

Diane Ugartechea is an occupational therapist at the League City Campus where she helps patients recover and heal in both the hospital and rehabilitation gym setting.

School of Medicine students present an illustration of “Old Red” to State Rep. Mayes Middleton, R-Wallisville. UTMB students visited the Texas Legislature in early March as part of the Texas Medical Association’s First Tuesdays at the Capitol event. According to the TMA, the March 5 event gave physicians in training a chance to meet with legislators to discuss issues related to medicine and the future of practicing in the state.

Favour Onwukwe, a nurse in a Hospital Galveston facility known as 7A, is just one of the 3,000 CMC employees who provides constitutionally mandated levels of care to more than two-thirds of the state’s incarcerated offenders.

Scientists have gained new insight on a poorly understood key player in the timing of labor and delivery, bringing researchers closer to being able to prevent pre-term births.

Dr. Ford Ben-Okoli, second-year UTMB family medicine resident, shares his passion for dance with other members of the UTMB community as one of three instructors of the social dance class offered weekly at the UTMB Alumni Field House.

Leonard LaComb, a principal facilities project manager for UTMB Design and Construction, oversees the exterior construction of the new South Tower that will add five stories and boost the patient bed count to nearly 100 as the campus rapidly expands to meet growing patient demand.

UTMB is now the only institution in the Greater Houston Area—and one of only five in Texas—to be fully recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). More than 84 million U.S. adults have prediabetes, a condition where blood sugar is higher than normal but not high enough yet to be diagnosed as diabetes. People with prediabetes are at high risk for type 2 diabetes (the most common type of diabetes), heart disease and stroke, making this program particularly significant in improving health in our communities. Congratulations to the following UTMB team members for making the CDC full recognition a reality: Dr. Nicola Abate, professor and chief in the UTMB Division of Endocrinology; Dr. Hanaa Sallam, research scientist and coordinator of UTMB’s Diabetes Prevention Program; Michael Washburn, program manager of UTMB’s Angleton Danbury Campus Community Resources, Wellness and Volunteer Services; Dr. Raquel Pena, research scientist in the UTMB Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science; Dr. Ben Raimer, senior vice president, Office of Health Policy and Legislative Affairs; Dr. Michelle Sierpina, founding director, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI); Dr. Cynthia Judice, chief medical officer for UTMB’s Primary Care Services and Community-Based Clinics; Dr. Hani Serag, research fellow in the Office of Health Policy and Legislative Affairs; Gene Felter, business manager for UTMB divisions of Cardiology and Endocrinology; Ann Varghese, director of Ambulatory Operations; and Julie Kuper, business coordinator in the Division of Endocrinology.

Stephen Pearson, a construction inspector with UTMB Design & Construction, has built more than 4,000 surfboards by hand.

At the start of every day, Rina Kalariya sits at her desk checking the latest performance reports for the point-of-care-testing (POCT) equipment she helps maintain and manage. It’s just one part of her role as technical supervisor for the POCT group within UTMB’s Laboratory Services department, but it’s an important one. “It’s my job to do this initial review every day to ensure there are no outliers [out-of-the-ordinary figures] and that the machines are producing accurate results,” says Kalariya. Producing rapid results and taking place as the patient is receiving care, POCT allows patients to receive faster diagnoses. This means they can more quickly receive the appropriate care they need. To perform this type of diagnostic screening, UTMB has specialized equipment that receives routine quality control checks and maintenance.

Defined as patients who return to the hospital within 30 days of their most recent discharge, 30-day readmissions at UTMB have been on the decline recently—boasting a 14.5 percent drop over the last two years. This notable trend has saved the institution nearly $2 million and was made possible in part by the development of programs and operational measures identified through the use of the Readmissions Explorer Application within UTMB Discover--an enterprise data warehouse and analytical toolkit that, through the use of various applications within it, aggregates real-time, accurate data generated by UTMB’s mission areas.

Facilities construction continues across UTMB, including the new Health Education Center on the Galveston Campus and expansion on the League City Campus. Here’s a closer look at the construction projects ongoing at UTMB.

President David Callender launched his “Pulse” video update series last year to keep the UTMB family up-to-date on issues affecting the organization.

Life partners for nearly a decade, Nicole Mendell and Christopher Smith Gonzalez share many things—a house, a car, a daughter. The list goes on, as the duo even shares an employer, UTMB. But what seems to bring them together the most is a passion for music—a passion they feed by performing together regularly in the local band Kevin Anthony & G-Town.

Eating a balanced diet is important to provide energy, improve health and decrease risk for certain diseases. Women have special nutrient needs that change at each stage in life.

The Health Education Center, under construction now on UTMB’s Galveston Campus, will provide students with myriad interprofessional educational opportunities when it opens this fall.

I’d like to wish you and your family a happy and healthy holiday season as we reach the end of another calendar year, one in which we continued to work together to fulfill our mission in remarkable ways despite some challenges we faced along the way.

Dr. Joseph Sheringo is one of 74 dentists practicing in UTMB-CMC Dental Services, which also employs 26 dental hygienists and 112 dental assistants who together provide care to the majority of the prison population in the state of Texas.

UTMB researchers have developed a less expensive way to produce vaccines that cuts the cost of vaccine production and storage by 80 percent without decreasing safety or effectiveness.

Over the past couple of years, UTMB has changed how it approaches the delivery of care to patients, particularly as it relates to improving access. That work was recognized in October when UTMB’s Ambulatory Operations— medical care provided on an outpatient basis in primary and specialty care clinics—was ranked 12th of 48 academic medical centers nationally that took part in the FY18 Vizient Ambulatory Quality and Accountability survey and achieved four-star performance.

Desiree McGahey may be more than two decades into her career with UTMB, but she’s just two years into exploring her love for woodworking.

Did you know that epilepsy is the third most common neurological disorder after stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, affecting more than three million Americans of all ages?

During World War II and immediately afterward, this physician served as a military surgeon in the U.S. Army Air Corps and then in the U.S. Army, eventually receiving the Army’s Legion of Merit.

Welcome to the latest issue of Impact. I’d like to start by congratulating each of you for your efforts in helping UTMB be named a winner of the prestigious 2018 Vizient Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award. We are one of 11 academic health science centers in the U.S. to be honored, and this marks the second year in a row that our university has received this national recognition.

When Christine Lai thinks back to her first exposure to the world of physical therapy, her grandfather comes to mind. After having several strokes, he needed the help of trained physical rehabilitation professionals to regain his strength and command of his body. As a child, Lai sometimes accompanied her parents to his therapy sessions, where she witnessed firsthand the integral role the physical therapists played in his recovery.

Aiming to get ahead of the rising threat posed by infectious disease and further UTMB’s mission to improve the health of the people of Texas and beyond, UTMB’s Dr. Peter Melby has been working diligently with his colleagues in the Department of Internal Medicine to organize and guide the efforts of the Global Infectious Disease Research Network, an initiative funded by the Office of the Provost.

Following a successful pilot run in 2017, the Coaching for Emerging Leaders developmental training program graduated its second group of participants Aug. 22. During the graduation on the Galveston Campus, participants received a certificate of completion and shared their biggest takeaways from the six-month program, which gives high-performing, high-potential UTMB employees the chance to receive one-on-one coaching and mentoring from leaders within the organization.

Twenty-seven UTMB faculty, staff and students recently received UTMB President’s Cabinet awards for projects that promote outreach, education and improved patient care in the community. This year’s awards program doubled as an anniversary celebration, as 2018 marks the 25th year of the distinctive organization.

For more than five decades, UTMB's School of Health Professions has educated generations of health care professionals who have become leaders in their fields and changed the world through life-altering care and research.

President David Callender launched his “Pulse” video update series in May to keep the UTMB family up-to-date on issues affecting the organization. Here's what was covered in the September and October videos: