Working Wonders

Annette Macias Hoag, associate vice president, Health System Operations and associate chief nursing officer, and Christine Wade, director of Patient Care Services and assistant chief nursing officer for Emergency Services, chaired the 20th annual American Heart Associations’ Black Tie and Boots Gala on Sept. 17 at Moody Gardens in Galveston. The gala celebrated 20 years of honorees, including UTMB Drs. George and Nikoletta Carayannopoulos. It also focused on the initiatives and achievements over the past 20 years, including lifesaving technologies the American Heart Association has helped fund at UTMB and local hospital systems. Over the last two decades, the annual black-tie event has raised more than $3.5 million.

Dr. Susan McCammon, associate professor in the Dept. of Otolaryngology and co-director of the Center for Cancers of the Head and Neck, was recognized for her compassionate, patient-centered care as the recipient of the 2016 Arnold P. Gold Foundation Award for Humanism in Medicine. McCammon has served as a medical director of the only non-profit hospice care center in Galveston County for the last three years and is the faculty sponsor of UTMB’s Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, an interprofessional student interest group. The national award was presented to McCammon at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation in San Diego in September.


Larry Timaeus, a member of the Angleton Danbury Campus Auxiliary, went above and beyond his volunteer duties to help out the ADC Health Information Management team pack hundreds of boxes with patient charts. Melodie Wootton, a medical records technician, said, “When we found out that we were going to have to remove our roller storage that housed all of our paper charts, we didn’t know how on earth we were going to do it, but Larry stepped in and helped out tremendously. In fact, he packed most of the 440 boxes himself.” Timaeus has been a volunteer at ADC since 2010 and also enjoys driving patients and visitors from the parking lots to the front door of the hospital. Thanks, Larry, for all you do!




Physical Therapy faculty members Laurie Farroni, DPT; Michael Furtado, DPT; Adrianna Laprea, DPT; and Dana Wild, PhD, were invited to participate in Rice University’s Innovate Design-A-Thon Assistive Devices for Adults and Children with Disabilities. UTMB faculty served as panelists, presenters and mentors to Rice engineering students, Texas Woman’s University students and UTMB Physical Therapy students. UTMB’s Luis Guajardo, Ashley Mitchell, Laura Kim, Lindsey Wells, Amethyst Guerrero and Luke Wang participated in this three-day event. The students worked to identify a problem to address which could be helped with some sort of assistive device.

UTMB’s Infant Hearing Screening Program received the highest level of certification after an annual review was conducted by the Texas Department of State Health Services. Newborn hearing screening programs in Texas are certified as Distinguished, Standard or Provisional. With a score of 99 percent, UTMB received “Distinguished” certification and beat the state average on seven of the eight metrics measured. Infant hearing screeners and audiologists with UTMB’s Center for Audiology and Speech Pathology continue to work to ensure quality hearing screenings for all newborns at birth, and appropriate follow-up services to all who are at risk for hearing loss.

School of Medicine students Adam and Christine Kley have received 2016 American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Ben Kean Travel Fellowships. The highly competitive fellowship is the only medical student award dedicated to nurturing a career path for physician-scientists in tropical medicine. Twenty-one fellows from 19 medical schools across the country were selected to receive airfare and up to $1,000 in living expenses for clinical training or a research project that takes place in an area where tropical diseases are endemic. The Kleys will travel to Cusco, Peru for the submitted project, “Impact of Fascioliasis among Children in the Peruvian Highlands.”