The IUSM Diversity Council will host the 10th Annual Diversity Week Jan. 17-20 in Wishard Memorial Hospital’s Myers Auditorium. This year’s theme is “Changes in the Health Care System: Health Care Reform and Its Impact on Diverse Communities.”

Each session will be from noon to 1 p.m. The presenters are:

• Jan. 17: Lori Arviso Alvord, MD, professor of surgery and associate dean of student affairs, Central Michigan University College of Medicine
• Jan. 18: Eli Coleman, PhD, chair of sexual health and director of the Program in Human Sexuality in the Department of Family Medicine, University of Minnesota
• Jan. 19: Elena V. Rios, MD, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association and president of the National Hispanic Health Foundation, Washington D.C.
• Jan. 20: Delbert Wigfall, MD, professor of pediatric nephrology, Duke University School of Medicine

Presentation topics are to be announced. Continuing Medical Education credits will be available. Lunch will be provided.

For more information, see the event flier.

The Continuing Medical Education program at the IU School of Medicine received a commendation for excellence and the rare distinction of being accredited for a six-year period by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.

ACCME is the national organization responsible for reviewing and accrediting organizations that provide continuing medical education to physicians. In its November letter extending accreditation through 2017, the ACCME noted that the six-year period is the highest accreditation given. ACCME found IUSM to be fully compliant with all evaluation criteria.

In awarding its commendation and extended accreditation term, ACCME cited IUSM’s success in deeply and thoroughly engaging today’s complex health care environment to produce innovative continuing medical education offerings. In addition to excellence in educational design, ACCME cited IUSM's excellence in addressing barriers physicians sometimes encounter when improving clinical practice.

The council also noted that IUSM collaborates broadly at state and national levels to develop continuing medical education and has effectively linked continuing medical education to key initiatives to improve health care quality.

Alexander M. Djuricich, MD, is associate dean for CME, and Hassan Danesh, PhD, is director of the CME program at IUSM.

The IU School of Medicine will cancel classes for first- and second-year medical students on Friday, Feb. 3, and Monday, Feb. 6, due to traffic and parking disruptions caused by Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis.

Medical students also should check with their clerkship directors regarding clinical rotations over the weekend of Feb. 4-5. The clerkship directors will make decisions about schedules based on the services to which students are assigned at that time.

All medical school cancelations during this period pertain to the Indianapolis campus only. All regional campus activities will remain unaffected.

Many other courses and offices on the IUPUI campus will also be closed during this period. Staff members are asked to work with their supervisors to consider alternate work options — such as flex time, compressed work weeks or telecommuting — during this period to reduce the level of activity on campus.

For more information and updates about the effect of the Super Bowl on IUPUI, visit registrar.iupui.edu/superbowl.html.

Volunteers are needed during Indy’s Super Cure to help ensure everything runs smoothly for the 700 women who will donate breast tissue.

Indy’s Super Cure, a partnership between the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Cancer Center and the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee, will be Saturday, Jan. 28, and Sunday, Jan. 29, the weekend before the Super Bowl at the IU Simon Cancer Center.

Volunteer shifts will be 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 1 to 6 p.m. both days. Volunteers can sign up and view a listing of volunteer job descriptions at www.komentissuebank.iu.edu. Go to the “volunteers” tab. 

Training will be required for all volunteers who have not previously volunteered for the Komen Tissue Bank. Volunteer orientation sessions will be offered at various times and locations throughout January. Volunteers will receive an Indy’s Super Cure volunteer T-shirt and during their shift will receive a meal, refreshments and free parking. 

Questions to Liz Way at 317-274-2366 or komentb@iupui.edu.

IUSM-South Bend students will begin honing their communications skills and bedside manner this spring in an innovative new program developing effective doctor-patient communication.

“The ability to communicate clearly and effectively with patients, and to listen attentively to their concerns, is critical to providing quality health care,” said Rudolph M. Navari, MD, PhD, assistant dean and founding director of the new program at IUSM-South Bend.

Medical schools have mastered the delivery of knowledge about diagnosis and treatment, but a focus on doctor-patient communication is rare. An actual class on communications, as IUSM-South Bend has planned, is almost unheard of, yet extremely important, Navari said.

“Successful physicians understand that a relationship with a patient can flourish in the face of the most devastating disease. But poor communication makes for poor medicine,” he said.

The program prescribes a curriculum for each of the four years of the medical school program, with lessons growing increasingly challenging as student work with patients increases.

This spring, IUSM-South Bend will begin phasing in the program with first-year students as they learn the protocol of taking a patient’s history. In the classroom setting, students will review how to talk with patients, develop effective communication techniques, break bad news, provide counseling and handle a palliative care setting. Patient-actors will allow students to role play these skills and difficult communication situations.

In each consecutive year, the communication experience will reflect the student’s additional responsibilities with patients. Second-year students learn how to conduct a physical exam. They will review how to deal with emotional patients and their family members, depressed patients, patients in denial, and those who need help making plans for long-term illness or the end of life.

In years three and four, when learning transfers to the clinical setting, students will have their communications skills observed as they work with patients across disciplines ranging from pediatrics to surgery to neurology. Challenges will include explaining a chronic illness, the need for surgical intervention, the importance of prenatal care, or the long-term impact of a traumatic injury. 

This novel four-year curriculum will assist students in passing the required patient interaction unit of the U.S. Board of Medical Licensing Examination in the fourth year of medical school, and also prepare them for a lifetime of patient and family interactions.

The 2011 Steven Beering Lecture Series has been archived online at the IUSM Mediasite. To watch the videos, visit this page and select from the first two lecture titles.

This year’s lecturer was Craig B. Thompson, MD, president and CEO of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, who presented “Cell Growth and Survival: It’s All About Metabolism” on Dec. 14. A second lecture for graduate and first- and second-year medical students, predocs, postdocs and residents titled “Metabolic Regulation of Epigenetics” was delivered Dec. 13. 

Dr. Thompson is a professor of immunology and microbial pathogenesis and cell and developmental biology at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences and professor of medicine at University of Pennsylvania.

To learn more about the Steven C. Beering Award for Advancement of Biomedical Science, see this page.

The IUPUI Women’s Advisory Council will celebrate its fifth anniversary from 4 to 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 19, in the VanNuys Medical Science Building atrium.

This event is an opportunity for both male and female faculty and students to network and learn more about the council’s mission and opportunities.

To register, visit faculty.medicine.iu.edu/registration/indexDirect.asp?id=566.

Libby Baxley, MD, professor and chair of family and preventive medicine at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, and Michael Magill, MD, Hicken Professor and chair of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine, will present “Health Care Delivery Redesign: Panacea or Fantasy?” from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, in the Riley Outpatient Center auditorium.

Drs. Baxley and Magill are national experts on the patient centered medical home model of care and the transition of academic health centers to become accountable care organizations.

This presentation is hosted by the Department of Family Medicine and open to the campus community.

Questions to Jane Goergen at 317-278-4848 or goergen@iupui.edu.

Enrollment is now open for the next session of Accent Modification for International Health Care Professions. The course will meet from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays from Jan. 17 to March 20 in the Methodist Hospital Candlelight Room (A3050-A).

The goal of this course is to improve participants’ spoken communications with colleagues, patients and staff through modification — not elimination — of their international accents. In addition to the traditional concerns of accurate sounds, the classes focus on fluency (word stress, sentence rhythm and intonation). This course is open to international faculty, postdocs, fellows, residents, medical students and nurses. Classes will be led by an experienced ESL instructor and meet 10 consecutive Tuesdays.

For more information or to register, visit faculty.medicine.iu.edu/special/aei.html.

Questions to 317-962-2275 or pkhurana@iupui.edu.

The Medical Humanities-Health Studies program has announced its Spring 2012 Seminars in Medical Humanities and Health Studies speakers series. The series kicks off with a presentation on yoga and medicine from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24, in the IUPUI Campus Center.

Andrea Jain, PhD, assistant professor of religious studies at IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, will present “Yoga as Medicine: The (Re)Construction of Yoga in Contemporary Culture.” Dr. Jain is an expert in South Asian religions and the social-scientific study of religion, with a focus on religion and the body.

Additional speakers will be Sarah Neville, PhD, and Nancy Rhodes, PhD, of IUPUI, and Daniel Sulmasy, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago.

For more information on speaker topics and dates, visit liberalarts.iupui.edu/mhhs or see the event flier.

Questions to Kelly Gascoine at 317-278-1669 or kgascoin@iupui.edu.

Richard Gunderman, MD, PhD, professor of radiology and imaging sciences and of pediatrics, will present a new course, “Concepts in Sexuality for the Clinician,” in Riley Hospital Radiology Classroom 1024A.

This March 2012 elective (course #93ZH890) will address the issue of human sexuality as it relates to clinical medicine and to being human. IU faculty will offer lectures, lead discussions and enable students to better understand the complex interplay between sex, psychology, ethics and culture, while gaining confidence in dealing with the social and medical implications of sexuality.

The course will explore clinical cases, journal articles and a textbook as well as literary works of fiction, poetry and film.

For more information, see the course flier. Questions to Emily Beckman at embeckma@iupui.edu.

University Information Technology Services will offer free IT training workshops during the 2012 spring semester through a pilot program to assess faculty and staff interest in free workshops.

To view the spring workshop schedule, read descriptions and register for the workshops, visit ittraining.iu.edu/pilot. In addition, 10 or more faculty or staff may request departmental or group workshops, for no charge. To request a workshop, see ittraining.iu.edu/request.

For more information, visit ittraining.iu.edu. Questions to 812-855-7383 or ittraining@indiana.edu.

The IUSM Library will be open on a limited schedule during the holiday season from Dec. 17 through Jan. 3. Dates and times are:

Dec. 17: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Dec. 18: noon to 5 p.m.
Dec. 19-23: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Dec. 24: Christmas Eve — Closed
Dec. 25: Christmas Day — Closed
Dec. 26: Campus observance — Closed
Dec. 27-30: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Dec. 31: New Year's Eve — Closed
Jan. 1: New Year's Day — Closed
Jan. 2: Campus observance — Closed
Jan. 3: Regular hours resume

IUPUI Health Services office hours will be shortened during the holiday break. During closure times, IU employees with a work-related injury that requires immediate attention should report to the University Hospital ER.

Employees who experience a needlestick, other contagious disease exposure or minor injury, or are not sure if their injury requires going to the ER, should contact an IUPUI Health Services staff member by paging the OUCH pager at 317-312-6824. The staff member will advise the employee on the appropriate management of the situation. Holiday hours are:

Dec. 23: 7:30 a.m. to noon
Dec. 26: Closed (Christmas Day observed)
Dec. 27-28: 7:30 a.m. to noon
Dec. 29: 8:30 a.m. to noon
Dec. 30: 7:30 a.m. to noon
Jan. 2: Closed (New Year’s Day observed)

IUPUI Health Services will resume normal business hours on Tuesday, Jan. 3.

A free, comprehensive guide is now available to connect people to relevant data related to advancing community health research in Indiana.

“Community Health Information Resource Guide: Vol. 1,” developed by the Indiana Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Community Health Engagement Program, the Polis Center at IUPUI and the Indiana State Department of Health, contains over 50 pages of information and links to local and national databases with information relevant to community health research projects, such as disease rates, economic statistics, demographic data and housing rankings. This first volume aims to assist users in making informed decisions about where they can access accurate information.  

Subsequent volumes will focus on capacity building and how to access data analysis and visualization tools. To get a copy of this free resource guide, click here.

Additional tools are resources also are available from the Indiana CTSI CHEP website at www.indianactsi.org/chep/resources/tools.

IUSM community members are reminded to “protect their tech” this holiday season by securing their portable electronic devices and other valuables.

The IU IT Security Office has released the numbers on thefts of technology devices in 2011. Thefts by device type officially reported are:

• Laptops: 85
• Smartphones: 17
• Tablets: 9
• IPods: 8
• Desktops: 1
• External USB hard drives: 1

These statistics include university-owned and personally owned devices. IU IT Security suggests tech owners keep their devices in a locked closet, cabinet or drawer if they must be left unattended. University and school policies also require data housed on all portable/mobile devices be encrypted and password protected.

Questions to the ISTM Help Desk at 317-274-5336 or istmhelp@iupui.edu

The Center for Youth and Adults With Conditions of Childhood at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health is a transition support program for children ages 11-22 with special health care needs.

The center has launched a new patient care website to help teens and young adult patients prepare and plan for their future health care needs. This site will provide both general and CYACC-specific resources, including tools that address the transition from pediatric to adult health care, the CYACC consult referral form and program brochure and an explanation of the transition consultation experience. 

To check out the new website, visit this page.

Scope will not publish Dec. 23 and 30 or Jan. 6 due to the holidays. Scope will resume regular publication on Friday, Jan. 13.

For information on how to submit info to Scope, visit scope.medicine.iu.edu/#submissions.

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

This week on Sound Medicine, IU pediatrician Rachel Vreeman, MD, questions the wisdom of chickenpox parties and similar strategies for avoiding the vaccine. Dr. Vreeman will also discuss new research on flu shots for kids allergic to eggs. In addition, Sound Medicine will feature a dicussion on robotic surgery for kidney tumors and an interview with the author of The Body Politic: the Battle Over Science in America.

Sound Medicine, an award-winning radio program co-produced by IUSM and WFYI Public Radio, airs at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 18, on WFYI, 90.1 FM. It is underwritten by IU Health Physicians and IUPUI. Reports on Primary Health Care topics are sponsored by Wishard Health Services.

For more information on this episode, visit the IUSM Newsroom. To listen online, see the Sound Medicine website.

A National Cancer Institute-supported research training program in behavioral oncology and cancer control is seeking applicants for special research fellowships in behavioral oncology. 

This highly interdisciplinary program encourages applications from a broad range of health care specialties. Funding is available for junior faculty scientists, postdoctoral fellows and predoctoral graduate students.

Faculty scientists on the IUPUI campus will offer coursework in cancer basics, behavioral oncology theory, behavioral oncology survey, intervention design and methods, and research ethics. Numerous electives also are available. This fellowship also includes concentrated research time under the interdisciplinary mentorship of two senior scientists.

Positions are currently available and provide up to two years of funding for junior faculty scientists or postdoctoral fellows and up to three years of funding for predoctoral graduate students. In addition to salary support or a stipend, benefits include health insurance, tuition and fees, and pilot research funding.

To apply or suggest qualified candidates, contact Kurt Kroenke, MD, at 317-630-7447 or kkroenke@iupui.edu. Candidates must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

The Indiana CTSI has issued a final reminder about the new funding opportunity from the Indiana CTSI.

Sustainable and Collaborative Informatics Projects grants require collaboration between two primary investigators — one PI from an IU health sciences school and the other PI from IU School of Informatics. The maximum amount awarded is $100,000, with a maximum duration of two years. Two or three awards will be funded each year.

These awards are part of the innovation initiatives series within the bioinformatics program of the Indiana CTSI lead by William Tierney, MD, professor of medicine and associate dean for clinical effectiveness research.

All applications will be peer reviewed. Investigators selected for funding will be expected to adequately address the reviewers concerns, and refine their projects appropriately before being funded. All funds will be released in a milestone-based manner during the project period.

This request for applications expires Saturday, Dec. 31. For more information, please see application guidelines. To apply, visit www.indianactsi.org/grants and log in using your institutional username and password.

Questions to 317-278-2874 or info@indianactsi.org.

Nominations are being sought for the 2012 Steven C. Beering Award and the Mark Brothers of South Bend Lecture.

• The IUSM Beering Award honors an internationally recognized individual for outstanding research contributions to the advancement of biomedical or clinical science. The award is presented annually and consists of a $25,000 prize. The recipient is asked to present one major lecture to the medical community at the time the award is bestowed and to spend about three days at IUSM delivering one or two additional lectures to smaller groups.
• The Mark Brothers Lectureship was created and endowed by Dr. and Mrs. Guey C. Mark to recognize nationally and internationally renowned medical scientists of Asian descent. The recipient is asked to present two lectures — one clinical and one research — to the medical community, and to spend about two days on campus, during which one or two additional lectures to smaller groups are planned. The recipient will receive a plaque and a check in the amount of $4,000.

Nominations should be sent in PDF file format and accompanied by a summary statement emphasizing the most important academic accomplishment(s) of the nominee, importance to biomedical or clinical science and why he or she is deserving of the honor. A curriculum vitae and a list of key publications are also requested.

Nominations are due Monday, Jan. 9. Send submissions to Tim Lofton at tclofton@iupui.edu.

Applications are open for grant awards from the Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust. The areas of eligible biomedical research are broad and described by the benefactors as “the type of medical research that is most likely to permanently benefit mankind.”

Applications for funding will be reviewed in two stages. An initial review by the IUSM Biomedical Research Committee will select the most meritorious proposals for further discussion and ranking. The committee will then provide a recommended ranking to the Showalter Trustees who conduct a second review. Final funding decisions are made by the Showalter Trustees.

The deadline for applications is 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 10. Funds will be awarded no earlier than July 1. Applications must be received via email by the Dean’s Office of Operations at iusmoper@iupui.edu.

For more information, visit operations.medicine.iu.edu.

The application deadline for the following IUSM internal grant programs is 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 10.

• Biomedical Research Grant
• Research Enhancement Grant

For application forms and further information visit this page.

The VA Medical Research Service at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center requests applications for small research grants.

Up to three grants of $15,000 to $25,000 each will be awarded from funding provided by the Indiana Institute for Medical Research. Applicants should be a qualified VA investigator (MD, DO or PhD) with an academic rank not exceeding assistant professor and no current or prior history as a principal investigator of NIH or VA funding.

Applications should be directed at the study of discrete projects intended to produce preliminary data in support of a future application for a VA Career Development Award or Merit Review grant. The applicant must remain qualified to apply for VA funding throughout the funding period.

For more information, see the complete application. Applications are due Sunday, Jan. 15, with notification by March 15.

The IU Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research offers weekly digests containing information about funding opportunities including those that limit the number of allowable preproposal or proposal submissions.

Funding updates categorizes include sciences, limited submissions, technology and multidisciplinary:

• Sciences
• Limited Submissions
• Multidisciplinary
• Technology

To subscribe to these updates by email, visit this page.