Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at The University of Iowa and the Cancer Research Alliance have teamed up to provide HOPE this holiday season. Starting Nov. 14, you can click here to shop at hundreds of major retailers while helping fight cancer at the same time. A percentage of each purchase will fund groundbreaking cancer research that will help save lives.

Some of the retailers you will find include:

•    Target
•    Amazon
•    Best Buy
•    Nordstrom’s
•    Barnes & Noble
•    Gap/Gapkids.com
•    Nikestore.com

The Cancer Research Alliance is a non-profit organization made up of 11 of the top cancer research institutions in the United States. The organization fights all cancers and is working to develop new therapies and protocols across the board including therapies that more precisely target any cancer without damaging surrounding tissue; treatments that are tailored to a patient’s molecular profile; and vaccines that teach the body’s immune system to seek out cancer cells and destroy them with little to no side effects.

Join Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Cancer Research Alliance this holiday season and give something more powerful than presents…give hope. For more information, contact Carol Jefferson.

University of Iowa researchers are ready to find the causes of interstitial cystitis, thanks to a five-year, $4.8 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The grant is the largest ever received by the UI Department of Urology.

Interstitial cystitis affects an estimated 1.3 million Americans, more than one million of them women, according to an NIH report published in 2007.

“Some people with interstitial cystitis can’t work because their symptoms are so severe. The condition has been difficult to treat because we don’t know the causes,” said the grant’s principal investigator Dr. Karl Kreder, UI professor of urology.

“This NIH grant will allow us to explore inflammatory factors in the bladder and, as some recent evidence suggests, whether interstitial cystitis is a total body condition,” said Kreder, who also is director of urodynamics, female and reconstructive urology in the Department of Urology at UI Hospitals and Clinics.

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Designer Nancy Zear and photographer Susan McClellen of UI Health Care’s Creative Media Group (CMG) have won an Award of Excellence for “New Beginnings,” the UI Carver College of Medicine’s 2007 annual report.

“It gives us respectability,” said Connie Peterson, CMG’s director. “It’s nice to be judged by other designers, by a community of our peers.”

CMG is the College’s full-service design and printing organization, creating such materials as posters, brochures and newsletters for the University’s use.

The award was announced by Graphic Design USA, a top competition in publication design. This year more than 10,000 entries were submitted and only the top 15 percent were recognized.

“It’s important for ourselves and our energy,” Peterson said about the honor. “It also increases the visibility of our institution.”

The Big Ten is famous for competitions but that doesn’t keep the conference schools from teaming up for the right cause. Representatives from several Big Ten schools, including The University of Iowa, recently participated in a volunteer effort organized by ORBIS International to help physicians in Vietnam improve how they treat and prevent blindness and other serious eye conditions.

Two UI Health Care ophthalmologists completed one-week trips in March and April on the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital — a state-of-the-art clinical and teaching facility housed on a DC-10 aircraft — and in local hospital settings in Da Nang. They trained Vietnamese doctors in the latest diagnostic and surgical techniques — from treating cataracts, to assessing glaucoma, to rebuilding eye sockets.

Dr. Keith Carter, head of UI ophthalmology and visual sciences, served on the recent trip, his third for ORBIS and first-ever to Vietnam. He led training in oculoplastics, which is surgery to repair or rebuild eye socket bones and surrounding skin and mucous membranes.

“It was a very positive trip. We contacted our host city physicians ahead of time to learn about the case mix, and once there, trained them so they can best take care of their own patients,” said Carter, who performed 10 surgeries on the trip. “It’s inspiring to be able to share expertise that we take for granted here.”

View Photo Album

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Dr. Matthew Howard, UI professor and head of neurosurgery, has been appointed the John C. VanGilder Chair in Neurosurgery. The five-year appointment was effective March 1.

The endowed VanGilder Chairmanship honors the achievements and contributions of the late Dr. John VanGilder, UI emeritus professor of neurosurgery, and was created by gifts to the UI Foundation from colleagues, former trainees, friends and the VanGilder family. John VanGilder died in 2007.

Howard, who joined the UI faculty in 1993, has led the UI Department of Neurosurgery since it was first created in 2001. He is an expert in neurosurgical treatment of epilepsy, and his cutting-edge research explores how the brain processes sounds and emotions. Howard also is active in the development of new medical devices. He helped pioneer the invention of the Stereotaxis Magnetic Navigation System, which uses magnets to precisely guide surgical instruments through the human body.

Howard is the first UI faculty member to hold the John C. VanGilder Chair in Neurosurgery, which is the department’s first endowed faculty award.

Full news release.

The UI held its first Conference on Obesity on April 8, co-sponsored by the UI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (ICTS) and the UI Institute for Biomedical Imaging. Designed to stimulate discussion across research disciplines and generate possibilities for clinical and translational science grant proposals, the conference focused on six different topics related to obesity. In breakout sessions following the main presentations, faculty shared their perspectives on issues, then collectively considered areas that might be addressed by a future multi-disciplinary research collaborations.

Organizers hope the conference and subsequent publicity can help create networking opportunities among researchers working on similar or related topics.

Obesity Conference Article Series

Organizers of a conference on obesity designed to stimulate discussion across research disciplines called the conference “a big step forward” toward the development of grant proposals for clinical and translational science. More than 80 persons, mainly faculty from the UI, participated in the conference held April 8 at the Iowa Memorial Union. The conference was co-sponsored by the UI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (ICTS) and the UI Institute for Biomedical Imaging.

“We wanted researchers from many colleges and many disciplines to get together with the goal of stimulating discussion that will lead to grant proposals,” said Gary Hunninghake, MD, director of the ICTS. “It’s clear we achieved that goal. This conference is the beginning of what I am convinced will be some dynamic and exciting research collaborations.”

The conference focused on six topics in obesity: nutrition, behavior and exercise, community/health disparity, epidemiology, pediatrics, and imaging/biology. Topic facilitators gave an overview of some of the facets of their topic. During breakout sessions which followed, faculty shared their perspectives on the issues and then collectively considered gaps in knowledge that might be addressed by a multi-disciplinary research collaboration.

According to Peg Nopoulos, MD, Director of the Translational Technologies and Resources section of the ICTS and organizer of the conference, those sessions helped connect researchers who, in many cases, were unaware of the work each other was doing. (more…)

At the first International Clubfoot Symposium, hosted at the UI, Dr. Ignacio
Ponseti visited with three patients treated with the non-surgical method that
bears his name. Approximately 200 health care providers from 44 countries
attended the symposium Sept. 12-14, and nearly 120 received training in the Ponseti method Sept. 15. From left to right with Dr. Ponseti are: Allison Mauck, 5; Kelly Trevillian, 7; and Annabel Leasure, 7.

Dr. Ann Willemsen-Dunlap, UI assistant professor of anesthesia and co-director of the UI Simulation Center, showed BabySim, a state-of-the-art medical simulator, to some of Iowa’s future health care providers at the Iowa State Fair. The UI’s current medical professionals will also get a chance to learn more about medical simulation later this month, when Dr. David Gaba, a pioneer in the field, lectures at the UI Sept. 18 and 20.

Dr. David M. Gaba, a pioneer in the use of simulation in medical education to improve patient safety and health care practice, will deliver two public lectures as an Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Sept. 18 and 20.

At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18, Gaba will present “What Is Culture of Safety, Why Do I Care, and What Does it Have to Do with Patient Safetyand Simulation?” in the Prem Sahai Auditorium (Room 1110A) in the Medical Education and Research Building (MERF).

At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, in the Levitt Center for University Advancement, he will discuss “Drivers and Implementers: Public Policy Aspects of the Evolution of Simulation Applied to Healthcare.”

In addition to his public events, Gaba also will present a joint Grand Rounds session to the Departments of Anesthesia and Surgery and meet with trainees and faculty from those departments to discuss the use of simulation in postgraduate, graduate and undergraduate medical education. Gaba also will visit the National Advanced Driving Simulator, meeting with faculty and staff from the UI Public Policy Center, and will discuss simulation-based performance assessment with faculty from the CCOM and the UI College of Nursing.

Gaba is the inventor of the modern, full-body patient simulator and an expert on how simulation training can improve public policy and public safety. He is professor of anesthesia and associate dean for immersive and simulation-based learning at Stanford University School of Medicine, and he directs both the Center for Immersive and Simulation-Based Learning (CISL) at Stanford and the Patient Simulation Center of Innovation at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

More information about Gaba’s visit is provided here.

Nearly 200 physicians and other health care providers, representing at least 30 countries, have signed up to attend the International Clubfoot Symposium, an event to explore research, patient care and education. The event will take place Sept. 12 to 14 at the Marriott Coralville Hotel and Convention Center in Coralville, Iowa.

A related event, the fourth annual Ponseti Clubfoot Races, will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, at the Marriott.

The symposium is being organized by Ponseti International, the University of Iowa-based organization that promotes the gentle, non-surgical clubfoot correction technique invented more than 50 years ago by UI emeritus professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation Dr. Ignacio Ponseti. Early in his UI career, Ponseti realized that surgical approaches were not successful and set about developing the method that now bears his name.

Since nearly 80 percent of children born with clubfoot live in impoverished nations, an essential advantage of the treatment is that it can be taught to nonphysician health care providers in areas with few or no doctors. In addition to finding ways to take the treatment to those countries, the conference also will address increasing awareness and use of the method in countries with better health care, where surgery is used. Currently, only about half the orthopedists in the United States are actively using the Ponseti Method, which has documented results and peer-reviewed research to show that it is more than 95 percent effective.

For more information on the symposium, please go to the event’s Web site.