pep talk

The dynamic duo of Drs. Dave Niesel and Norbert Herzog keep burning up the radiowaves; their radio show, Medical Discovery News, recently celebrated two milestones: 100 radio stations are now carrying their show, and they recently recorded their 100th program. The weekly radio show provides insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics; it’s always interesting, sometimes quirky, and meant to get people thinking about how biomedical science impacts all of us.

Check out their web site…

One of the toughest things I’ve done was travel around campus in the past year and listen to a common refrain: folks said they didn’t get enough of the good news about UTMB; that we were never in the media; that they never read/saw anything but bad stories. I had the benefit of seeing daily media clips in our office, so I knew there was lots of good news. There was a disconnect, however, and an important question: how best to widely share the good news and media highlights?  

For several years we’ve been offering a subscription-based service. About 1200 people had signed up to get the daily UTMB news clips electronically, sent to them via mail. That was working OK, for the few people who knew about it. We knew we had to do something else with a broader reach. We started talking about a weekly summary, and ended up with what you saw yesterday and today: UTMB in the News, delivered daily via email.

I went into this with mixed feelings, concerned about burdening people with yet another daily email. I joked with my colleagues about their “spam.” But one of the newest members of the Public Affairs team, Mike Cooper, came up with a great, low impact design (and he’s also working hard on our new web home pages). The media relations folks keep plugging away, pitching great stories and people. A process was worked out. Information Services provided their usual great support, and the message was born. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and I think I learned something: people want to feel good about where they work, what they do, why we matter. So, at the end of the day, the option of being “plugged in” to good UTMB news is worth the few extra keystrokes it takes to delete a message.

If you have a question or comment about UTMB in the News, please send it to public.affairs@utmb.edu.  

If you were on campus this Friday, you probably saw a message about a malfunctioning door in the Shope BSL4, the biosafety lab that’s been running for almost four years at UTMB. Because the facility worked as it’s supposed to work, the issue was a non-issue—and the university fulfilled its pledged to keep the community and media informed about events in our biocontainment facilities.

I keep a stack of National Geographics near my bed and flip through them in those few quiet minutes of settling in before sleep. A few nights ago, I came across an article that puts the big picture in perspective for me (and turned out to be so very timely); it hammers home the importance of this lab and the work some very bright and dedicated men and women do in it. The article “Deadly Contact,” was written by David Quammen and ran in October 2007.  Here’s an excerpt from it:

Predators are relatively big beasts that eat their prey from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such as viruses) are relatively small beasts that eat their prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful, under ordinary conditions it’s every bit as natural as what lions do to wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles. But conditions aren’t always ordinary. Just as predators have their accustomed prey species, their favored targets, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally depart from its normal behavior—to kill a cow instead of a wildebeest, a human instead of a zebra—so can a pathogen shift to a new target. Accidents happen. Aberrations occur. Circumstances change and, with them, opportunities and exigencies also change. When a pathogen leaps from some nonhuman animal into a person, and succeeds there in making trouble, the result is what’s known as a zoonosis. 

It’s a good article. Life and nature are amazing and complex. The work we’re doing to understand nature and protect people is vital. Read the full text online at National Geographic Magazine.

I used to post these with some frequency. I think they talk to the tremendous scope of work at UTMB, the accomplishments of our UTMB colleagues, and some of the issues we face. It’s a snapshot of one week in the life of UTMB (My thanks to my colleague Marsha Canright and her team for assembling. As for me, I’m off to build a pinewood derby racer with my son.):  (more…)

Although I like to think I have a pretty good handle on issues that are important to campus, I missed a big one recently with the closing of Schutte’s Corner. I read about it in Laura Elder’s Biz Buzz. I was a regular during the restaurant’s heyday; the convenience couldn’t be beat, the “poor and hungry” offered a good value and some well-executed variety, and you couldn’t throw a piece of fried okra without hitting three people you knew (Not sure this was a good thing…) 

While more recently there might have been some issues with consistency, overall it was still a good place to grab a bite and I’m sorry to see it go. While there’s no shortage of lunch choices these days (unless you want Indian or Thai food on the island), Schutte’s was still a special place—a place of comfort, friends, familiarity and a wicked chicken & dumplings—for many of us at UTMB.        

You may have heard or read something these past few days about a pending policy decision related to cancer care for illegal immigrants. Locally, The Daily News and Houston Chronicle ran with stories that have been picked up nationally and put UTMB at the center of a long-simmering debate about immigrant rights and more specifically, care to the uninsured in the U.S. I have a feeling this issue and discussion will be with us for a while, so I promise to come back and share my perspective. But in case you missed this other story in the long shadow cast  by immigrant cancer care, USA Today ran a story on MRSA (the drug-resistant superbugs) and highlights efforts at UTMB, where we are pretty aggressive in our efforts to combat the nasty critters. Read the USA Today story.   

Liliana Ortiz, a team leader at Rosenberg Elementary School in Galveston, commended UTMB’s Dr. Lauree Thomas, associate dean of students in the SOM, for her excellent presentation to Rosenberg’s gradeschool students. “Not only did she provide an immediate response to my request, she came with a caring attitude and interest to speak to our children,” Ortiz wrote in a letter to the editor last week in The Galveston County Daily News. Dr. Thomas, you’re a good lady.