UAMS Names Tritt Executive Director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research
| LITTLE ROCK – Jodiane Tritt, an attorney with administrative experience leading health programs in Arkansas, has been named the first executive director for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Center for Clinical and Translational Research.
Tritt served the past four years as director of community support for the Arkansas Department of Health. In her new role, Tritt will coordinate activities of the center, established in 2008 to translate basic science discoveries into speedier treatments and cures for patients. The new executive director also will serve as a liaison for the center’s work to researchers, physicians, institutions and community health professionals.
A $19.9 million grant from the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health in 2009 – the largest research grant received by UAMS – placed UAMS with an elite group of 46 medical research institutions working as a national consortium to improve biomedical research across the country. The center has already awarded more than $1 million in research grants to UAMS scientists seeking to move their scientific work from the laboratory to the patient bedside.
“Jodiane’s combination of experience in public health and academic health sciences is a good fit for the work being done by the Center for Clinical and Translational Research to advance medical research in a way that will help people,” said Curtis Lowery, M.D., director of the center and principal investigator for the NIH clinical translation grant.
While at the Department of Health, Tritt’s responsibilities included working with groups internally and externally to promote public health efforts at the local level; supervising administrators at health units across Arkansas; and serving as a liaison for the department with government leaders at the community, state and national level. Prior to the stint with the Department of Health, Tritt served as registrar for the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.
Tritt earned her law degree in 2006 from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Hendrix College in 2000.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Related Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a 540,000-square-foot hospital; a statewide network of regional centers; and six institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute and the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging. UAMS has 2,775 students and 748 medical residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including nearly 1,150 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com.