Chancellor Sees ‘Phenomenal’ Change at UAMS

By almost any measurement, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) continued a period of “phenomenal” growth and change in the past year, reported Chancellor I. Dodd Wilson, M.D., on Nov. 7 in his annual State of the Campus address.

UAMS is seeing more patients, educating more students, hosting more research that is turning to new medical treatments and reaching out to serve more communities than ever before, the chancellor said. Wilson pointed to successes across its patient care, education, research and outreach missions, tying them to the institution’s goal of improving the health of Arkansans. UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center.

“We have had such phenomenal growth over the last 30 years,” Wilson said. “We’ve just got to continue to get better. We have a state that needs us to continue to get better.”

Wilson concluded his address by announcing his intention to step down as chancellor in 2009 after seeing the major hospital expansion project to completion. Wilson celebrated 20 years at UAMS in 2006, arriving to be dean of the UAMS College of Medicine, then becoming chancellor in 2000.

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Tricia Satkowski, Ed.D., came up with the idea for a cookbook fundraiser and has seen the cookbook through to its recent publication.

Northeast Arkansas AHEC Vital to Region’s Doctors

Alex Baltz, M.D., wanted to be a physician in his hometown of Pocahontas. And as with many doctors in the area, his path was cleared by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Area Health Education Center (AHEC) in Jonesboro.

Most doctors don’t just show up in a rural community and begin practicing without having ties to the area. Doctors like Baltz who call northeast Arkansas home say their residency education at AHEC Northeast provided the contacts necessary for a successful move to private practice.

“I feel like I got a good education and was able to step into private practice and go full bore,” said Drew Dawson, M.D., also a Pocahontas native who credits AHEC Northeast with enabling his transition from medical school to the Pocahontas Medical Clinic.

Like many family medicine physicians who have settled in the region, George Patton, M.D., wouldn’t be there had it not been for AHEC Northeast.

“All you have to do is walk down the hall there at the AHEC and look at the pictures of its graduates,” said Patton, who has practiced medicine at the Community Healthcare Center in Walnut Ridge since 2003. “You realize that a whole lot of the family medicine doctors within about a 40-mile radius of Jonesboro came right through the AHEC.”

The Arkansas Legislature in 1973 established five Area Health Education Centers across the state to support UAMS’ efforts to produce family medicine physicians. With support from the Legislature and then-Gov. Dale Bumpers, UAMS’ goal was to address a critical shortage of family medicine doctors in rural areas.

It worked.

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