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AUG. 25, 2003 | University
of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)
College
of Medicine senior Sherita Willis,
M.S., of Luxora, Arkansas, is one of eight
medical students nationwide chosen for the
National Medical Fellowships (NMF)
Program in AIDS Care.
The college’s executive associate dean for
academic affairs, Richard P. Wheeler,
M.D., called the award a major
accomplishment for a UAMS student.
“This is a pretty big deal for us, and
we’re very proud of her for applying for
it and getting it,” Dr. Wheeler said. “She
is obviously very tenacious. She’s
appropriately aggressive in looking for
opportunities to learn, and she is going
to have a tremendous opportunity to spend
a month at USF and the AIDS Institute.”
Willis will participate in a
multidisciplinary training program at the
University of California, San Francisco (USF)
AIDS Research Institute Oct. 6-31.
Willis says she wants to
practice family medicine with a special
interest in care of infectious diseases in
her native Mississippi County. She was
selected in part for research she did
during her first year of medical school
into the testing parameters general
practice physicians use for Hepatitis C
and HIV/AIDS, concluding in an article she
co-authored in Arkansas Family
Physician that they should be
broadened. Willis said that project piqued
her interest in HIV/AIDS. Later, in the
summer of 2002, she worked in the East
Arkansas Family Health Clinic in West
Memphis, the treatment center for most of
the HIV cases in the Mississippi Valley
area.
“So then seeing this
program online, and knowing I would
actually learn how to treat the patients
that have HIV, I became very interested,”
Willis said. “The pharmacology aspect of
treating AIDS has always interested me,
and so I’ll learn that. And I’ll be
helping a patient population that doesn’t
always get the best care.”
The Fellowship Program in
AIDS Care prepares new physicians to adapt
quickly to the changing issues of HIV/AIDS
in medical practice and to establish an
ongoing communications network in which
minority physicians are comfortable
addressing the complexities of caring for
the disease. The eight Fellows are placed
in projects from three areas that match
their interests: seminars and workshops
on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment,
clinical preceptorships in AIDS practices,
and placement in community-based
organizations central to AIDS prevention
and treatment.
“I’m hoping clinical care
will be my focus in San Francisco,” Willis
said. “From my understanding the AIDS
Institute is where most of the AIDS
research in the country goes on, and I’m
hoping I can gain the skills that will
make a difference when I begin practicing
in my home county.”
The prestigious Fellowship
includes an award of $7,000 for travel and
living expenses during the four weeks in
San Francisco. Along with Willis, students
from the University of Pennsylvania School
of Medicine (2), the University of
Rochester School of Medicine and
Dentistry, the University of South Dakota
School of Medicine, the Yale University
School of Medicine, the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
in New York City, and the Meharry Medical
School in Nashville, Tennessee received
fellowships. |
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