UAMS Names Davis Urology Department Chairman
| LITTLE ROCK – Rodney Davis, M.D., an internationally recognized expert in minimally invasive techniques for the treatment of urologic cancers, has joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Medicine as professor and chairman of the Department of Urology.
Davis most recently served as a professor in the Department of Urologic Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and as chief of Urology at both the Tennessee Valley Veterans Healthcare System and Meharry Medical College in Nashville. He has specialized in minimally invasive techniques including laparoscopy and robotics in the treatment of urologic cancers.
A Malvern native, he graduated from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. He was a medical student at UAMS in 1978 before graduating from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans in 1982. Davis completed a residency in urology at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., and later completed a fellowship in urology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
From 1996 to 2007, he was on the faculty of Tulane University’s Section of Urological Oncology, while also serving as chief of Urology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in New Orleans. He was recruited to Vanderbilt, Meharry and the VA system in Nashville in 2007.
Davis also has served in numerous active and reserve military posts and medical leadership positions throughout his career. He is retired from the military but still holds the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. His assignments have included Madigan Army Medical Center, the 47th Combat Support Hospital in the Persian Gulf in 1990-91, and the Task Force 399th Hospital in Al Asad, Iraq, in 2007. Among many military honors, he received the Army Meritorious Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal in 2007.
He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a member of the American Urological Association (AUA) Advisory Committee to the American College of Surgeons, and chairman of the AUA Guideline Panel for Microscopic Hematuria. He is a director for the African Medical Research Foundation U.S. and has been active in bench and clinical prostate cancer research.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a statewide network of regional centers; and seven 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, the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and the Translational Research Institute. Named best Little Rock metropolitan area hospital by U.S. News & World Report, it is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has more than 2,800 students and 775 medical residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including about 1,000 physicians and other professionals who provide 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.