University of Alabama Health Sciences

From the Dean

WE’RE #1!!

That’s a common refrain around Tuscaloosa these days, and a well-deserved recognition for our National Champion Crimson Tide football team.

At a time when healthcare is under the microscope and many people are trying to find the best ‘tweak’ or ‘overhaul’ to achieve the necessary improvements in our national healthcare rankings, we find ourselves in a position that is critical to the future of healthcare.

We are a campus formed to train primary care physicians – exactly what is being increasingly recognized as our greatest need.  Further, we are committed to exploring the best way to deliver care in the new healthcare environment, while remaining malleable enough to make whatever changes are necessary in the future.

CCHS and Tuscaloosa…….a great place to be, whether you are celebrating a national championship in football or building the first-class healthcare system of the future.

College News

The Rural Health Institute was awarded $99,800 for one year and was one of 191 applications that competed for funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant. These funds will assist the College in increasing the availability of clinical telemedicine in rural areas in Alabama, especially in regard to psychiatry and obstetrical services. The project will also enable medical students and residents to learn more about the telemedicine and its application in rural areas. 

The College currently provides tele-psychiatry services to rural mental health centers in West Alabama. Through a program with the West Alabama Mental Health Center in Demopolis, mental-health centers in that city and in five surrounding counties are directly linked to psychiatrists in the Betty Shirley Clinic at University Medical Center.  The USDA grant will enable the College to purchase more cameras, monitors and other special digital equipment and add four more rural primary-care clinics to its telemedicine efforts in Walker, Bibb, Pickens and Monroe counties, and to work toward expanding to other clinical and academic services.

Dr. Pamela Payne-Foster, Deputy Director of the Rural Health Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, published with Dr. Susan Gaskins “Management of AIDS Related Stigma by Older African Americans Living with HIV/AIDS” in the peer reviewed journal AIDS Care October, 2009.  The project was funded by the Center for Mental Health and Aging at The University of Alabama.

Dr. Payne-Foster also published a collaborative study in the Journal of the National Medical Association, “Recruitment of Rural Physicians in a Diabetes Internet Intervention Study: Overcoming Challenges and Barriers.”  Other authors included Dr. John Higginbotham, Professor and Chairman of the Rural Health Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (RHI), and Mukesha Voltz, Former Research Associate for RHI; UAB Collaborators included Jessica Williams, Carlos Estrada and Monika Safford.  Dr. Jeroan  Allison from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst also appeared as an author and was the Principal Investigator of the study which was funded by the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Events

  • Alice McLean Stewart Endowed Lecture

    Feb 18th, 12:15 pm - 01:15 pmDCH Regional Medical Center, Willard Auditorium“Pathophysiology of Substance Abuse” Thomas R. Kosten, M.D.

  • Winternitz Conference

    Mar 2nd, 12:15 pm - 01:15 pmUniversity Medical Center, Classrooms 1-3TBA Jim Flemming

  • Winternitz Conference

    Apr 6th, 12:15 pm - 01:15 pmUniversity Medical Center, Classrooms 1-3TBA

  • Special Emphasis Week - Nephrology

    Apr 12th, 12:15 pm - 01:15 pmDCH Regional Medical Center, Willard Auditorium"Salt and Water" Richard H. Sterns, M.D.

  • Special Emphasis Week - Nephrology

    Apr 13th, 12:15 pm - 01:15 pmDCH Regional Medical Center, Willard Auditorium"Chronic Kidney Disease" Robert C. Stanton, M.D.