This month, the UTRGV School of Medicine starts a new academic year, welcoming its newest medical students, residents and fellows. With these new cohorts, the School of Medicine is furthering its mission to train more physicians in a variety of specialties for the Rio Grande Valley.
We now have 203 medical residents and fellows training in nine residency and four fellowship programs. Historically, 64 percent of our trainees continue to practice medicine in the Valley. We look forward to increasing that percentage by training more physicians in specialties that will benefit our community.
Our newest group of medical students, the Class of 2023, has the most students from the Rio Grande Valley, with 24 students. Of those, 15 are graduates of UTRGV. Later this month, we will celebrate with their families, as well as with the families of all our students, the beginning of their journey in their medical careers at the White Coat Ceremony.
We will continue to strengthen our ties to the university and local school districts to develop pipeline programs that will prepare future medical students for the School of Medicine and, ultimately, more physicians for the Valley.
This new academic year, we will also celebrate the opening of our UT Health Multispecialty location in Edinburg, which will offer a variety of services including primary care, vision, women’s health and various surgical specialties. We also will begin offering a dual degree program for our medical students: a Master of Science in Bioethics. Students enrolled in this program will learn about the bioethical issues related to health equity in underserved communities, such as the Valley, which will provide them with a better understanding of how to help their patients.
And, later this academic year, we will celebrate with our inaugural class our first Match Day, where our students will learn where they will begin their training in their chosen specialties, and our first commencement ceremony.
Please join me in welcoming this latest generation of talented students, residents and fellows. Thank you to the dedicated faculty, staff, and countless others who work to provide an exceptional educational experience for these future scientists, clinicians and educators.
Kind Regards,
John H. Krouse, MD, PhD, MBA
Dean, UTRGV School of Medicine
Executive Vice President, Health Affairs
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UTRGV SOM welcomes the Class of 2023
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The UTRGV School of Medicine welcomed its newest class Monday, July 1, at its first day of orientation at its Medical Education Building in Edinburg.
Students of the Class of 2023 were selected from more than 6,500 applicants. This class has an average MCAT score in the 73rd percentile nationally, an average overall grade point average of 3.61 and an average science grade point average of 3.51.
This class has the largest number of students from the Rio Grande Valley, with 24 students, 15 of whom graduated from UTRGV. It is also the most diverse class. Women comprise more than half of the new enrollees, and 53 percent of the students are from groups historically u
nderrepresented in medicine.
The students' orientation culminates with the White Coat Ceremony, scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, July 27, at the UTRGV Performing Arts Complex Auditorium in Edinburg.
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UTRGV part of international collaboration on studying gene expression changes during organ development
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John VandeBerg, Ph.D., a professor of Human Genetics and director of the Laboratory Opossum Resource with the South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute at the UTRGV School of Medicine, was part of an international team of researchers that has published the first detailed roadmap of developmental changes in the expression of all genes in each of the major organs, from early embryos to adults.
The roadmap was completed for humans, laboratory mice and five other species, including the laboratory opossum, a small marsupial which is born at the developmental stage of a 6-week human embryo.
UTRGV has the only large breeding colony of laboratory opossums in the world, with a steady state of more than 1,000 animals. This colony was vital to the published results and to understanding similarities and differences in organ development between placental mammals and marsupials.
VandeBerg pioneered the development of the laboratory opossum for research applications and contributed his expertise with this species to the published work. His lab produces about 3,000 possums each year. He and his team collected data from more than 100 possums for this project.
The unique UTRGV laboratory opossum research resource attracts collaborators from all over the world, enables many research applications that would otherwise not be possible and brings international recognition and prestige to UTRGV, he said.
“This speaks to the importance of international collaboration in science,” he said.
This research provides new understandings about the evolution of gene expression changes during development, and about how changes in gene expression affect the how cells develop into specific cells for various organs and how these cells function.
The defined changes in expression of every gene of each of the major organs will be an invaluable resource for pinpointing the causes of developmental abnormalities in humans, both before and after birth, and for establishing new therapies aimed at correcting errors in gene expression.
The collaboration involved institutions based in eight countries—China, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States—the lead institution was Heidelberg University in Germany.
VandeBerg said this international collaboration has been ongoing for about a decade.
The manuscript was published on June 26 in the prestigious, internationally acclaimed British journal,
Nature.
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UTRGV residents receive ACGME Back to Bedside grant
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With the help of funding from the
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s
(ACGME)
Back to Bedside
initiative, Drs. Rex Huang, Ashley Cruz and Krishna Suri, and their faculty adviser, Dr. Chelsea Chang, assistant professor of Internal Medicine at the School of Medicine, are developing a project called “Teaching Effective Communication: Engaging our Colleagues, our Staff, and our Patients” that will train health care providers how to better communicate with each other and with their patients.
The idea for the project came from a discussion Huang had with Chang on how to enhance communication among health care team members as well as communication between health care provider and patient. As medicine becomes more team based, the need for good communication skills is important, Huang, the team leader on this project said.
“The more you get into medicine, the more you realize it’s not just the physician and patient, making sure they’re taken care of, but working with each other in an effective manner…that they’re all taken care of and know what the plan is,” he said.
Suri added that better communication can also improve patient care and reduce errors in care.
“We recognize a significant burden that medical errors play in this country, and a lot of that can be mitigated by communication with the family, with the patient, recognition of mistakes that were made previously, and all of this requires you to have open channels of communication without fear of reprisal, he said.
Though still in development, the residents plan to use techniques such as role playing and asking more open-ended questions to determine best practices. They also plan to evaluate different methods to see how effective they are.
The Back to Bedside initiative provides funding to medical residents to develop innovative projects to enhance patient care as well as training and research opportunities for residents. The UTRGV School of Medicine is one of 33 recipients this year. UTRGV received $5,000 from the ACGME and the School of Medicine is providing funding for travel to trainings and other ACGME meetings that are required under the grant. Funding for projects is renewable for up to two years.
The residents said they are grateful to School of Medicine leadership and the ACGME for their support in this endeavor.
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Save the Date: 3rd Annual Research Symposium Sept. 13-14 at UTRGV SOM and McAllen Convention Center
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With the theme, "Health Disparities: Community Engagement," this year's symposium will showcase research and programs that promote health equality and highlight best practices for how the scientific and medical research community can engage communities, health organizations and workers to address the common goal of eliminating health disparities.
The symposium will be held Friday, Sept. 13, at the UTRGV School of Medicine, 1210 W. Schunior St., Edinburg, and Saturday, Sept. 14, at the McAllen Convention Center, 700 Convention Center Blvd.
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UT Health RGV Multispecialty in Edinburg to open July 15
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UT Health Rio Grande Valley, the patient care arm of the UTRGV School of Medicine,will begin accepting appointments and patients for its UT Health RGV Multispecialty location at 3804 S. Jackson Road in Edinburg when it opens July 15.
The 17,700-square-foot facility includes 25 patient exam rooms and provides residents in Edinburg and surrounding communities with access to high-quality and personalized health care services–all in one convenient location.
UT Health RGV physicians are dedicated to transforming the quality of health care and improving the health and wellness for individuals and families in the Rio Grande Valley.
The new Multispecialty location will offer patient care services in:
- OB/GYN
- Vision
- Primary and Urgent Care
- Surgical Specialty: Ear, Nose and Throat, Endocrine Surgery, Plastic Surgery, and Orthopedics
For more information, visit UT Health RGV’s
website.
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) awarded The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) a five-year, $1.9 million grant to expand integrated behavioral health training to medical students and students in other disciplines that treat mental health issues.
With the grant, the UTRGV School of Medicine is developing the Primary Care Behavioral Health Partnerships Advancing and Transforming Health Sciences (PCBH PATHS), which will develop online learning modules and other educational tools for medical residents and other health professions (physician assistant studies, nurse practitioner, and master’s level mental health disciplines at UTRGV).
“The goal is to permanently augment UTRGV’s capacity to deliver integrated behavioral health clinical services and, at the same time, transform the learning opportunities related to integrated behavioral health for medical learners and mental health trainees on campus,” George said. “It’s essentially a workforce development pipeline.”
The PCBH PATHS program builds on existing programs at the School of Medicine, said Dr. Deepu George,
assistant professor of Family Medicine and division chief of Behavioral Medicine in the Department of Family Medicine at the UTRGV School of Medicine
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George said
previous support
from Methodist Healthcare Ministries’ Sí Texas: Social Innovation for a Healthy South Texas program, the Social Innovation Fund and the Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation helped UTRGV develop the foundation for this grant.
The project will start with the development of the modules, which will be 35-40-minute online lectures that will provide training for general behavioral health as well as for opioid and substance abuse disorders. The initiative will also systematically address clinical provider well-being by providing essential skills for maintaining wellness and develop program specific initiatives to address well-being as a central curricular issue, George said.
In addition, students will have a few opportunities to receive clinical training as well, either by completing training at one of the School of Medicine’s clinical sites that have Primary Care Behavioral Health services, by participating in mixed reality simulation sessions offered through the College of Education and P-16 Integration, or through participating in a
Project ECHO
(Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) sessions through Arizona State University.
“In the United States we have done a fantastic job of separating the head from the body, and if you really look at medical education, to a large extent, the separation of physical and mental health is pretty rampant in how people are trained,” he said. “What we’re trying to do here is minimize the gap in some of these learners in their tracks to help them recognize a biopsychosocial framework, not in an aspirational way, but in real clinical scenarios.”
“We’re making our graduates more competitive for the emerging market here,” George said. “If you go to Houston, Austin or other big cities, integrated behavioral health jobs are opening and a lot of providers who get these jobs have no prior training. Most integrated behavioral health training happens on the job.”
The grant started July 1 and runs through 2024.
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Psychiatry resident wins poster competition at APA national conference San Francisco
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Dr. Ali M. Khan, a Psychiatry resident at the UTRGV School of Medicine, won the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Area 5 resident/fellow poster competition for his poster, “Cognitive Behavior Therapy Versus Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing in Patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials.” Khan received the award recently at
the 2019 APA's national conference in San Francisco, California.
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Blangero listed among most highly cited researchers in the world
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John Blangero, PhD, professor in the UTRGV School of Medicine's Department of Human Genetics and director of the South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute's Genomic Computing Center, is
listed as one of the most highly cited researchers in the world.
In a recently updated list based on information from the Google Scholar Citations database, Dr. Blangero ranked among the 2929 researchers in the world who have h-indices greater than 100. The h-index measures productivity and the impact of published papers, taking into account a researcher’s total number of papers and how many times each was cited by other scholars.
Blangero is listed among 2,929 researchers in the world who have h-indices greater than 100. Blangero is one of only 50 researchers in the UT system with h-indices greater than 100 (he is ranked 43 in that group) and the only researcher at UTRGV who is on the list.
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Tsin named American Physiological Society Fellow
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Andrew Tsin, PhD, associate dean for Research, professor and chair of the
Department of Molecular Science at the
UTRGV School of Medicine, has been named a fellow of the American Physiological Society.
The rank of Fellow is an elite member status reserved to honor distinguished leaders who have demonstrated excellence in science and made significant contributions to the physiological sciences and served the Society, according to the society.
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Ronkino McCoy, Class of 2022
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Ronkino McCoy is a second-year medical student from Malden, Missouri. McCoy serves as treasurer for the Military Medicine Interest Group and the American Medical Student Association. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. Edwards University in Austin and served eight years as a medic in the U.S. Army. This summer, McCoy is conducting research on improving the care of trauma patients at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon.
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Sponsor a White Coat Today. Join us in welcoming our future generation of physicians
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The White Coat Ceremony has become one of the most important traditions for the incoming medical class at the UTRGV School of Medicine. It creates an important milestone for students entering the medical profession. In the presence of family, friends, and faculty members, students will be presented their first white coats, marking the official start of their medical career.
Since its inception in 2016, the White Coat Ceremony has welcomed more than 200 of the Rio Grande Valley’s incoming medical students. This white coat represents care and compassion and it is personally placed on each student’s shoulders by individuals who believe in the student’s ability to carry on the noble tradition of medicine.
Join us in welcoming our future generation of physicians by supporting a white coat. For $150, you are providing a student with the universal symbol of the profession of medicine - the white coat.
Your contribution shows students you believe in their ability to succeed and is a symbol of your commitment to the next generation of physicians. Your gift will have an immediate and meaningful impact on UTRGV and the lives of our students.
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Your gift to the School of Medicine supports our mission to educate a diverse group of medical students and future scientists to benefit the Rio Grande Valley and the world.
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Great things are happening at the UTRGV School of Medicine. Learn more about the SOM Strategic Plan.
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The University of Texas
Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine
Phone: (956) 296-1900
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