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Dear School of Medicine Community,
I hope you all had a rejuvenating July 4th holiday break. As I said in my message with Dr. Bert O’Malley on Monday, we owe a special thanks to so many of our clinicians who did not get a break, and who worked instead to care for our patients injured in the South Baltimore mass shooting this weekend. Our R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center team, and our physicians, nurses, and support staff in the UMMC Emergency Department and Pediatrics Emergency Department worked in an incredibly organized manner to mitigate the impact of this tragic event. Shock Trauma received a surprise visit yesterday from Governor Wes Moore, who toured the facility, met the victims, and spent time with our clinicians and staff to thank them for their invaluable service. I know the four hours he spent at Shock Trauma meant a lot to the patients and our practitioners, especially on a holiday.
It’s been a busy summer already and we are not slowing down! Coming off the heels of opening our new Kahlert Institute for Addiciton Medicine (KIAM), as of July 1, it is now legal in Maryland to possess and use small amounts of cannabis and cannabis products for adults aged 21 and older. The legalization of recreational cannabis use is sure to have an impact on our mission, as federal government data shows that up to 17 percent of adolescent initiators of cannabis will develop cannabis use disorder over time. That is part of the work that the KIAM will take on in its research goals, with a commitment to fundamental neuroscience research and translational clinical trials targeting substance use disorder. I’m proud of the way we’re staying ahead of these breaking issues and strategically addressing generational challenges in medicine.
Leadership plays a big role in our ability as an institution to maintain the momentum to address various health challenges, of which cancer care across Maryland figures prominently. We all recognize that cancer screening plummeted nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a recent analysis of our screening volumes suggest a full recovey across UMMS, with the exception of sustained decreases in lung cancer screening. The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center has played an outsized role in cancer care for all the citizens of Maryland and a singularly successful role amoung National Cancer Centers in the enrollment of minority groups in Cancer Clinical Trials. While only 3-4 percent of patients in cancer clinical trials nationally are black, we are proud that we enroll up to 40 percent of black Americans in our clinical trials at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. We plan to leverage and advance this success via partnerships with our new Institute for Health Computing, aiming to bring advanced cancer care and research to all Marylanders across the state.
For the next month, we will have the five finalists on campus for the position of Director of the Cancer Center. In fact, we already started last week. I am very thankful to our search committee, my senior leadership, and everyone who has played a role in this high-level recruitment – keep up the great work and please show up when you can to support this effort.
Speaking of showing up, 919 of you participated in our strategic plan brainstorming sessions, which we completed in early June, with an impressive 82 percent in-person attendance rate. We also had a great response rate to our questionnaire, with many of you providing thorough and thoughtful insights. A huge thank you for all the engagement so far – let’s keep it up! Later this month, faculty representatives will come together to develop strategic goals for the three missions of clinical care, education, and research. Additionally, our faculty devoted to community service and population science will soon be invited to a community-focused brainstorming session. I am committed to understanding your needs and vision, and working diligently to address these ideas in our new strategic plan.
Part of the changes we are already making that affects our faculty involves creating a uniform and systematic annual faculty evaluation process, which we will begin by piloting in one basic and one clinical department for review of FY23 faculty performance.
Another important effort we have underway includes our plans to re-develop the UMSOM website. The last complete re-design was completed in early 2017, so there is much we can do to update and enhance – particularly in education and training, recruitment of residents and fellows, and improving and updating content for department-level subsites. This includes an urgent need to update and complete our faculty profiles, which is one of the most viewed parts of our site.
As you know, our presence on the web is increasingly the school’s window to the outside world (nearly 2 million page views so far this year), so I have made this a high priority initiative. Larry Roberts, in the Office of Public Affairs & Communications, will lead this year-long effort and will be reaching out to enable each department to build dynamic and impactful webpages across the UMSOM. I thank you in advance for your time and commitment to this critical work.
Thanks to everyone for all your hard work! I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer.
With enthusiasm and commitment,
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