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From the Dean

Next week marks the “official” beginning of the new legislative session in North Dakota. Although the Legislative Assembly starts on Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019, there is a “pre-session” meeting of members Monday through Wednesday of next week, culminating on Wednesday morning when Gov. Doug Burgum presents his Executive Budget for the 2019-21 biennium. We all […]

Dean Joshua Wynne is away from the office this week. His For Your Health column will return on Friday, Nov. 30.

I recently was briefed on the School’s philanthropic status. As you know, we work closely with the UND Alumni Association and Foundation (UND AAF) and partner to develop resources that support the School’s priorities. We have identified mitigation of student debt and the development of endowed professorships and chairs as our twin priorities for this […]

This will be a truncated column this week, as Susan and I returned from the annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) late Tuesday night, and I was seeing patients in the Adult Congenital Heart Disease clinic all day yesterday. By the way, the clinic (which I staff along with pediatric cardiologist […]

This past week was jammed-packed with exciting happenings. It was a particularly rewarding week for me because I help teach the cardiovascular pathophysiology section of Block 6 of the second-year medical student curriculum (there are four blocks in each of the first two years of medical school). In addition to my other activities, I had […]

This past Tuesday we held our eighth annual Adopt-a-Med-Student Program Luncheon, in which we award all our first-year medical students a stethoscope provided by some of the School’s generous donors. Some donors even provided more than one stethoscope. The idea behind the event is two-fold: first, to provide students with a stethoscope that they will […]

As you know, the SMHS relies on practitioners from all across North Dakota to help train our medical and health sciences students. Although much of our clinical educational efforts occur in the outpatient (non-hospital) setting, the six tertiary care hospitals (along with the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Fargo and 36 smaller Critical Access Hospitals […]

I spent the last few days at the triannual meeting of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the national accreditation body for all of the medical schools in the United States and Canada. As one of the 15 professional members of the LCME (along with two public members and two medical students), I and […]

Last Sunday, Susan and I attended the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony for the first concert in its 2018-19 season. It was a spectacular performance, ending with a fantastic rendition of a Brahms favorite of mine, the Double Concerto in A Minor (Op. 102). The piece features the violin and cello, and the two guest performers (Chee-Yun and […]

It has been a busy week since my last column! Homecoming 2018 was a resounding success, even if the football team unfortunately couldn’t finish the week off with a win. But the other events during Homecoming 2018 went very well. The Continuing Education Symposium on infectious diseases that the School hosted last Friday was well […]

UND Homecoming 2018 is in full swing! There have been a variety of activities already this week, including the Sioux Awards banquet last night at the Alerus Center. Among the honorees was basketball great and Williston, N.D., native Phil Jackson, who was one of the recipients of this year’s Sioux Awards. As you might imagine, […]

This past Tuesday, a delegation from the UND SMHS traveled to Bismarck for a scheduled meeting of the SMHS Advisory Council. As I’ve discussed before, the Council is a legislatively mandated group that advises the School, UND, the member organizations that have representatives on the Council, and especially the Legislature regarding the strategic plan, programs, […]

Congratulations are certainly in order to our School’s Senior Associate Dean for Medicine and Research, Dr. Marc Basson, for leading the multi-institution team that we just learned will be receiving a $20.3 million, five-year grant to help counter the high cancer rates in North and South Dakota. The award, given by the National Institutes of […]

This past Tuesday, I testified before the Interim Higher Education Committee of the North Dakota Legislature on behalf of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences Advisory Council. I’m the executive secretary of the Council, and ordinarily I’d testify along with Chair Dave Molmen, CEO of Altru Health System, but Dave was out of […]

It has been a while since I’ve discussed health management, financing, and policy issues in this column, but a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine was so provocative and insightful that I thought I’d bring it to your attention. Co-written by Michael Chernew and Austin Frakt, it addresses the challenges facing the […]