What’s on my mind this month is the impact the current economic downturn is having on medical schools throughout the country and the efforts we will make to place the University of Maryland School of Medicine in a position to weather the storm. The adverse financial climate is impacting all of our funding sources, including endowment, state support, research and patient revenues, and thus our response must be comprehensive.

Many medical schools, including ours, are dependent on endowment funds to support operations and to generate income and additional funding from the interest they earn. However, due to the dramatic drop in the stock market, many of those endowments will generate less income. Harvard University, for example, recently reported that its endowment fund lost 22 percent of its value in the past four months and could lose as much as 30 percent of its value by the end of the fiscal year. Similarly, we also have seen a decline in the market value of our endowments by about 20 percent.

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Curtis Adams, MD and
Ann Hackman, MD

Curtis Adams, MD, assistant professor, and Ann Hackman, MD, associate professor, both from the Department of Psychiatry, co-chaired a workshop entitled “Assertive Community Treatment Teams (ACT): The Opening Night and the Extended Engagement” at the American Psychiatric Association’s 60th Institute on Psychiatric Services in Chicago, Illinois, in October 2008. Additionally, at the same conference, Drs. Adams and Hackman participated in a workshop entitled “Supporting People with Severe and Chronic Mental Illness in an ACT Team Who Have Been Diagnosed with Terminal Illness,” which was chaired by Theodora Balis, MD, assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry.

Joyce Frye, DO, MBA

Joyce Frye, DO, MBA, clinical assistant professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine and Center for Integrative Medicine, presented the following lectures last year: “Comparing Use of Homeopathy with a Practitioner and Use as Self-care in the 2002 National Health Interview Survey” at Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis, in Ostende, Belgium; “CAM in the Peri-operative Period: What to Use and What to Avoid” at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Annual Clinical Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana; and “Healing the Body Through Holistic Medicine” at a conference entitled “Celebrating the Journey: Mid-Life Health Care for Women,” which was sponsored by the Hippodrome Foundation, Inc., and the University of Maryland Medical Center and held at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland.

Amal Mattu, MD; Robert Rogers, MD and Terry Mulligan, DO, MPH

Amal Mattu, MD (left), associate professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, was the keynote speaker at the Jamaica Emergency Medicine Association’s annual conference in Kingston, Jamaica, in June 2008. The title of his talk was “Best Cardiology Articles of the Past Year.” In addition, Dr. Mattu, along with Robert L. Rogers, MD, assistant professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, conducted faculty development workshops for academic emergency physicians in the Netherlands in September 2008. The work-shops are part of a new administrative/faculty development fellowship at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The fellowship is coordinated by Terry Mulligan, DO, MPH, clinical assistant professor, Department of Emergency Medicine. Drs. Rogers and Mattu focused their sessions on teaching and leadership skills, precepting a medical student rotation and directing an emergency medicine residency.

Michael J. Makley, MD

Michael J. Makley, MD, assistant professor, Department of Neurology, gave an invited platform presentation at the inaugural meeting of the National Institutes of Health US Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group in Bethesda, Maryland, in November 2008. Dr. Makley’s presentation was entitled “Sleep, Memory and Behavior after Moderate to Severe Brain Injury: Developing a Paradigm for Treatment Trials.”

John A. Kastor, MD

John A. Kastor, MD, professor, Department of Medicine, spoke about his most recently published book, "Selling Teaching Hospitals and Practice Plans; George Washington & Georgetown Universities", at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in September 2008. The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) is the center of the University of Pennsylvania’s activities and programs in health services research, health policy and health care management executive education.

John McLenithan, PhD

John McLenithan, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, presented a symposium talk entitled “Omentin in Human Obesity” at the Obesity Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, in October 2008.

William F. Regine, MD

William F. Regine, MD, Isadore and Fannie Schneider Foxman Chair in Radiation Oncology, was the invited speaker at the Fourth Annual Oncology Congress in San Francisco, California, in September 2008. Dr. Regine’s presentation was entitled “Novel Radiation Approaches in the Treatment of Pancreas Cancer.” Also in September 2008, Dr. Regine presented “The Impact of Whole Brain Radiation Therapy after Focal Therapy: Facts and Fiction” at the Seventh Annual International Neuro-Oncology Updates at The Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Brain Tumor Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and “Stereotactic Radiosurgery for Brain Metastases: Alone or with Whole Brain Radiation Therapy” at the Second Annual Lecture Series in Advances in Stereotactic Radiosurgery at Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Regine also is a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology.

Larry D. Weiss, MD, JD, FAAEM

Larry D. Weiss, MD, JD, FAAEM, professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, presented the opening address and served as a session moderator for “Acute Coronary Syndrome in the Observation Unit and Acute Medicine Unit” at Urgenza VI Congresso Nazionale, which was organized by the Società Italiana di Medicina d’Emergenza and held in Rimini, Italy, in November 2008.

Richard Y. Zhao, PhD

Richard Y. Zhao, PhD, associate professor, Department of Pathology, chaired a session at the 10th Shanghai International BioForum on Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Industry in Shanghai, China, in 2008. In addition, Dr. Zhao presented “Single Molecule Detection for Molecular Diagnostics and Individualized Testing” at the Discovery2Diagnostics (D2D) Conference organized by the IBC Life Sciences, in San Diego, California, in October 2008.

Lixing Lao, PhD

Department of Neurology Faculty

The following Department of Neurology faculty presented abstracts at The Movement Disorder Society’s 12th International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders in Chicago, Illinois, in June 2008:

Karen Anderson, MD, assistant professor, presented “Impulse Control Disorders in Parkinson’s Disease Patients followed in a Community-based Neurology Practice.”

Paul Fishman, MD, PhD, professor (left); Karen Anderson, MD, assistant professor; Stephen Reich, MD, Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal Endowed Professor of Parkinson's Disease; William Weiner, MD, professor and chair; and Lisa Shulman, MD, Eugenia Brin Professor of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, presented “Detecting Early Changes of Functional Status in Parkinson’s Disease,” “Self-efficacy: A Marker for Psychogenic Movement Disorders,” and “The Circumstances Associated with Falls in Parkinson’s Disease.”

Stephen Reich, MD, Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal Endowed Professor of Parkinson's Disease, also presented “The Spectrum of Saccadic Abnormalities in PSP: A Video Demonstration.”

Bradley Robottom, MD, resident, Karen Anderson, MD, assistant professor, Paul Fishman, MD, PhD, professor, Stephen Reich, MD, professor, William Weiner, MD, professor and chair, and Lisa Shulman, MD (above), Eugenia Brin Professor of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, presented “Do Personality Traits Increase the Risk of Apathy in Parkinson’s Disease?”

Brock A. Beamer, MD

Brock A. Beamer, MD, joined the Department of Medicine in October 2008 as an assistant professor. He also will work in the Gerontology Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), part of the department’s Division of Gerontology. He received his undergraduate degree from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, and his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Beamer received his internal medicine training from the University of California, Los Angeles San Fernando Valley Program and did his geriatrics fellowship at Johns Hopkins, where he has been on faculty. Dr. Beamer is a board-certified geriatrician. A previous Beeson NIH-AFAR scholar, Dr. Beamer has an R01 from the National Institute on Aging to investigate genetic associations with longitudinal declines in strength with aging. His long-term goals are to combine molecular, genetic, metabolic, body composition and functional studies to examine the response of older frail adults to interventions designed to improve fitness and function. He desires to better understand who will benefit from interventions to improve physical function and quality of life and to determine the mechanisms underlying these improvements so that even better treatments can be designed and implemented.

Fumiko Obata, PhD

Fumiko Obata, PhD, joined the Department of Microbiology & Immunology in July 2008 as an assistant professor. Dr. Obata received her BS degree in biology from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, in 1996. She obtained her MS and PhD degrees, in 1998 and 2001 respectively, from Tohoku University as well. Working as the key research collaborator for Tom Obrig, PhD, professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Dr. Obata’s primary responsibility will be to conduct research on the pathophysiology of disease due to Shiga toxin and enterohemorrhagic E. coli.

Debra Modlin

Debra Modlin, joined the Office of Clinical Affairs in September 2008, under the direction of Robert Barish, MD, vice dean for Clinical Affairs, as executive administrative assistant I. In addition to supporting Dr. Barish, she will provide backup support to the Office of the Dean. Previously, Ms. Modlin worked for Unlimited Systems Support, Inc., where she was the executive assistant to the president, and also formerly worked at the University of Maryland, Baltimore from 1985 to 1999 for the School of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology as well as the School of Nursing and Human Resources. She also has worked in the Department of Dermatology under University of Physicians, Incorporated.