Welcome to the fifth edition of our faculty newsletter, Connect. This triannual newsletter disseminates content for the faculty, from the faculty. Our goal is to update, inform and enrich our faculty community. Connect strives to contain links to resources, upcoming events and more. As we engage each day in the School of Medicine’s mission, we bring with us our core values to create and maintain a culture of mutual respect with a genuine awareness of belonging for all faculty. Send questions, comments, content ideas and faculty news to SOMfacultyconnect@wayne.edu.
Organized in the 1970s in response to legislative recognition of the need for more physicians to practice Family Medicine in Michigan, the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences is a home to more than 40 physician and doctoral faculty members, and more than 250 voluntary faculty, engaged in research, education and clinical care. Learn more from the department’s chair, Jinping Xu, M.D., on her views on the department’s research strengths, faculty expertise and collaborations. Learn more from the department’s chair, Jinping Xu, M.D., on her views on the department’s research strengths, faculty expertise and collaborations at the bottom of this newsletter.
Welcome to our School of Medicine community! According to the Office of Faculty Affairs and Professional Development, these faculty joined the Wayne State University School of Medicine since November. Clinical:
Robin Hanks, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (new FTE)
Min-Hee Lee, Pediatrics
Zhongjie Shi, Pediatrics
Xun Bao, Oncology
If you see them in the hallway, we hope you have a chance to say hello!
Teaching and Mentoring
Biomedical Career Advancement Pipeline, a six-week summer research program for high school students in 10th through 12th grade, is still looking for research mentors. As many as 70 Detroit area high school students are expected to participate in this transformative research experience June 24 through Aug. 2. Students are expected to work with research mentors Monday through Thursday for up to five hours per day to develop independent research projects, which will be presented at the research symposium Aug. 2.
Joongkyu Park, Ph.D., (Pharmacology) received support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Now in Phase 1 of the program, Dr. Park and collaborators at Harvard University will develop new studies of brain lipid droplets to better understand memory formation and brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease.
Have you heard...?
The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research Rankings for 2023 are online. Wayne State University increased its ranking of NIH funding for Schools of Medicine for the third year in a row! Four divisions--Emergency Medicine, Ophthalmology, Physiology and Oncology--exceeded $5 million in NIH funding for 2023. Check out the listed departments on Today at Wayne. Congrats to all NIH-funded investigators who helped our school increase our exposure and contributed to research excellence!
Have you worked with our medical students? Did you know the Class of 2024 achieved a 98% match rate this year? (National average was 93.5%.)
Do you know of other events? Email the Connect team for events in the upcoming issue (next publication expected in August 2024) at SOMfacultyconnect@wayne.edu.
Coffee Hour
Ready to connect with faculty? Our monthly, dean-supported coffee hours for faculty are at 3 to 4:30 p.m., on the fourth Wednesday of each month. The next coffee hour is on May 22.
And make sure you keep an eye on what the National Institutes of Health is working on. Starting January 25, 2025, NIH grants and fellowships will be scored on new criteria and have to adapt to a new funding framework.
Are you affiliated with the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute? KCI has launched a new web portal, “Internal Funding Opportunities,” for affiliated members that includes information and application forms. This new website is designed to present KCI’s array of internal grant programs and initiatives to foster innovation and excellence, from seed funding for groundbreaking basic research projects to support for developing innovative clinical trials. The new portal will be expanded in the future to include information on awardees and maintained to provide the most current listing of KCI’s internal funding opportunities. This can be accessed directly at Karmanos internal funding page.
Looking for more internal and external funding opportunities? Check out this list on the School of Medicine webpage.
Resources
Collaborations are challenging, especially when you don’t know each other’s expertise. But the Research Development Committee of the School of Medicine Faculty Senate has put together a resource. Access the shared spreadsheet (requires AccessID login). Add or update your area of research and techniques to the list so School of Medicine faculty can find the skills that can advance each other’s research.
What are the major research areas of your department? One major focus of departmental research is the promotion of health equity in Black populations across the lifespan (pregnant women, children and adults). Faculty have conducted cutting-edge work to understand and reduce such disparities in the areas of birth outcomes, childhood asthma and diabetes, prostate cancer, substance abuse and cardiovascular health. This work includes both descriptive studies to characterize predictors of health disparities at the level of individuals (e.g. psychosocial stressors related to socioeconomic status, discrimination), neighborhoods (e.g. residential racial segregation) and health care systems (e.g. patient-provider communication) and intervention studies designed to improve health in Black populations through changes in critical endpoints such as lifestyle behaviors and medication adherence. A related area of research focus is the conduct of behavioral clinical trials, including the use of innovative trial designs and methods such as Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial and Multiphase Optimization Strategy across the translational spectrum, from early feasibility and pilot trials to effectiveness trials and implementation science studies.
The department also has a major focus on community-engaged research, which includes research with community members and community organizations such as Brilliant Detroit, Community Health Awareness Group, Kids Health Connection, Detroit Parent Network and more. A critical component of this work is a focus on building the capacity of communities to partner in research so that community-driven research priorities receive the attention they deserve. Finally, several of our faculty have conducted scholarly work through funded training grants to improve the quality of interprofessional education and training, including for medical students and public health professionals, with the ultimate goals of enhancing health care quality and delivery.
What collaborations occur within your department? A major strength of our department is the interdisciplinary approach that supports collaboration both internally and externally. Within our department, collaborations often focus on bringing together methodological expertise (for example, in quantitative and qualitative methods) around a particular chronic health condition. This approach harnesses the expertise of faculty from various disciplines (e.g., medicine, psychology, social work, public health) and has enhanced our success in obtaining extramural funding. A highlight of our collaborative work is the involvement of five of our faculty in the Community Engagement Core of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities-funded P50 Center ACHIEVE GREATER, where departmental faculty work together to promote community-academic partnerships to improve cardiovascular health equity across the Great Lakes region.
What collaborations occur with other departments/divisions/universities? Department faculty collaborate extensively with faculty within the School of Medicine and across the WSU campus. Many of these activities are supported by actively-funded grants. Here is a partial list of our collaborative activities:
Dr. Erin Madden works closely with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and the School of Social Work
Dr. Samantha Bauer with the Department of Emergency Medicine
Dr. Samuele Zilioli with the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics
Drs. April Carcone, Deborah Ellis, Elizabeth Towner and Dionyssios Tsilimingras with the Department of Pediatrics
Dr. Julie Gleason-Comstock with the Center for Urban Studies
Drs. Zilioli and Angela Tiura with the Department of Psychology
Drs. Carcone and Towner with the College of Engineering
Dr. Rhonda Dailey with the Developmental Disabilities Institute
Drs. Jinping Xu, Tsilimingras and Binienda with the College of Nursing
Due to the cutting-edge nature of the department’s research, our faculty have active collaborations both nationally and internationally, including with institutions such as Case Western Reserve University, Florida State University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, University of Georgia, Emory University, University of Michigan, University of New Mexico, National Science Foundation of China and others.
What should other faculty know about your department’s expertise to collaborate more? As our department has faculty with research skills and expertise across the clinical translational spectrum, we are well-poised to collaborate more. Our faculty are part of several of the cores within WSU’s Clinical Research Service Center, housed in the Integrative Biosciences Center, including the Epidemiological & Biostatistical Consultation group and the Office of Community Engaged Research.
What is unique about your department’s teaching? True to the specialty of Family Medicine, our educational activities traverse the entire training spectrum, including a diverse array of learners at all levels of training. We are active in undergraduate and graduate medical education and graduate public health and postdoc training. Our faculty have won several teaching awards and have been recognized by the university and nationally for innovation in curriculum, course and teaching methodology.
In undergraduate medical education, we lead the required Year 2 Clinical Experiential Learning Course, which emphasizes ambulatory clinical exposure with the overall objective of developing students as medical professionals, patient advocates and skilled clinicians. In Year 3, we lead the required Family Medicine Clerkship, which trains students in a community-based primary care setting where they experience care and treatment of children, adolescents and adults with acute and chronic disease.
We offer several residency programs, including Preventive Medicine, Family Medicine and Transitional Year training. The Preventive Medicine residency program offers innovative training in clinical preventive medicine and public health sciences. Selected residents obtain the M.P.H. degree as part of the training program. The Preventive Medicine program is supported by the MIDOCS program, which is designed to address shortages in primary care physicians in the state, in particular those practicing in underserved and rural communities. Our Family Medicine residency offers ambulatory training in Rochester, Mich., through Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital and an urban track with Wayne Health in Detroit. The one-year Transitional program, also housed at Ascension Rochester, is designed for entry into categorical residency programs.
The Master of Public Health Program is housed in our department. The entire accredited M.P.H. Program includes 42 credits with a broad array of experienced faculty who provide the required courses for graduate students. This connection provides rich opportunities for all of our faculty to engage with public health students and professionals in the community for shared research and scholarly projects.
We also lead other health care professional training programs through the Michigan Area Health Education Center. We have co-led this initiative with the College of Nursing since it was established in 2010 to improve access to primary care for all Michigan residents. MI-AHEC seeks to expose disadvantaged students to health care opportunities, expand the number of underrepresented minorities in the health professions, and encourage students and health professionals to work in areas that need greater access to primary care providers.
What makes your department great? The interdisciplinary nature of Family Medicine and Public Health makes our department exciting and enriching for all of us. Our faculty are highly motivated and skilled in research and teaching, with a deep commitment of service to those in the community. We all value the importance of reducing health disparities and advancing the excellence of clinical care, research and education.
What makes your staff great? Like our faculty, our staff is dedicated and passionate about advancing our mission to provide excellent teaching and skilled research. They are equally committed as the faculty to providing the best professional service to the university and the School of Medicine. Our learners and community partners rely on our staff for their guidance, patience and problem solving. Our department is successful because of our partnership with our hard-working staff. Visit Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences for more information.
Do you have questions for the dean or other faculty? Questions about faculty, research and resources, training and education?
