Kirch: “tough questions” loom
for academic medicine
In his President’s Address to attendees of the 2008 AAMC Annual
Meeting, AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, M.D., called on
the academic medicine community to respond to several “tough
questions” affecting the community’s mission areas and the health
care system as a whole. With the U.S. presidential election looming,
Kirch challenged the leaders of the nation’s medical schools and
teaching hospitals to tackle financial conflicts of interest in
medical research and education; address the disparity of resources
among AAMC member institutions and economic inequalities among medical
specialties; attain true balance in the key mission areas of education,
research, and patient care; achieve flexibility and responsiveness
in medical education; and improve health care safety and quality.
Desnick discusses genomic medicine
AAMC Chair Robert J. Desnick, Ph.D., M.D., professor and chair
of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at The Mount
Sinai School of Medicine, gave a detailed account at the AAMC Annual
Meeting of the “hope, hype, and reality” surrounding genomic medicine.
Desnick described the field as a promising—-though not yet realized—-tool
for treating a range of diseases. He called on medical schools to
more closely integrate genomics into their curricula, and said students
should learn to take detailed family histories, given that disease-causing
genetic variants are often inherited.
Koppel: “I cannot remember a more dangerous
time”
In his keynote address to the 2008 AAMC Annual Meeting, veteran
television and radio journalist Ted Koppel asserted that the United
States and the world face a host of problems, and that he “cannot
remember a more dangerous time than the one we find ourselves in
today.” Massive national debt, international political instability,
and an unsustainable energy supply, among other factors, are combining
to create “a fiasco” in many areas of society, Koppel said. He suggested
that “we all have to be prepared to give up something” in order
to help solve the problems, and welcomed a “new and historic” political
era that could provide positive momentum in the near future.
Sussman begins term as AAMC Chair
During the AAMC Annual Meeting, Elliot
J. Sussman, M.D., M.B.A., president and chief executive officer
of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network (LVHHN), began his
one-year term as AAMC Chair. Sussman succeeds Robert J. Desnick,
Ph.D., M.D. An internist, professor, and administrator, Sussman
has overseen LVHHN since 1993. The hospital network is a clinical
affiliate of the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine,
where Sussman also serves as the Leonard Parker Pool Professor of
Health Systems Management, professor of medicine, and professor
of public health sciences. He is also former chair of the AAMC Council
of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems.
Powell named AAMC Chair-Elect
Deborah
E. Powell, M.D., dean of the University of Minnesota Medical
School and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair at the University
of Minnesota, was named chair-elect of the AAMC during its annual
meeting. Powell is a board-certified surgical pathologist and a
medical educator with more than 30 years of experience in academic
medicine.
