View Larger Image
In 2023, UAMS expanded physically and operationally, opening new facilities and breaking ground on others. Image by Evan Lewis

Year in Review: UAMS in 2020 Helps Lead COVID-19 Response, Keeps Focus on Missions

Dec. 16, 2020 | Almost nothing about 2020 has been typical. UAMS nevertheless adapted to the COVID-19 global pandemic, stayed true to its core missions and helped lead state efforts to combat the disease.

UAMS responded quickly and robustly to the pandemic’s public health threat in keeping with its 140-year history of patient care, medical education and research.

Classes and meetings moved for several months to live online video streams, outpatient and elective surgeries were suspended for several weeks in the spring and anyone entering the campus was screened for symptoms. Employees who could work from home did so.

The university organized and made available some of the first testing for the disease done in the state and played a key role in public education by disseminating the most up-to-date knowledge about COVID-19.

On Dec. 15, the first UAMS clinical staff received vaccinations against the virus that causes COVID-19.

While UAMS did everything it could that was recommended to stop the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, what may be equally remarkable are the positive things that continued UAMS’ tradition of excellence. Diversity and inclusion was one of those areas.

The university’s College of Pharmacy welcomed the Class of 2024, which had one of the highest percentages of underrepresented minorities in the college’s history, nearly 20 percent.

Erika Petersen, M.D., became the first female neurosurgeon in Arkansas to be promoted to full professor while Heather Pinckard-Dover became the first female neurosurgeon to complete a residency at UAMS.

Johnathan H. Goree, M.D., an anesthesiologist who specializes in chronic pain and director of the Chronic Pain Division at UAMS, was named Arkansas Physician of the Year on April 2 at the Arkansas Business Healthcare Heroes celebration, which was held virtually online.

Longtime professor Paul Phillips, M.D., started work as the new director of the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute.

Work on the $150 million Energy Project, including construction of the new power plant on the east side of campus, stayed on schedule despite the pandemic. The first of the new generators to be installed in the plant was recently delivered to the campus.

UAMS once again was designated by the American College of Surgeons as the state’s only adult Level 1 Trauma Center, and the Medical Center again was recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the best hospital in the Arkansas.

In January through UAMS HealthNow, UAMS began providing 24-hour, digital health access to convenient, real-time care for Arkansas patients using the internet through mobile devices or computers.

PATIENT CARE

• UAMS HealthNow was well-positioned online to screen patients for COVID-19 while also reducing demand on outpatient clinics and helping prevent further spread of the virus. From mid-March to mid-April, HealthNow took more than 2,000 calls and thousands more used its online screening tools to see if they needed further testing for the virus.
• In the spring, COVID-19 testing capacity and access to it was limited statewide. The UAMS Mobile Triage team offered COVID-19 drive-up screening in cities and towns in Arkansas and testing for screened patients who showed symptoms of the disease. As testing capacity and access improved, the team began offering testing for anyone at their drive-up clinics. On campus drive-up screening and testing has been offered by UAMS since the start of the pandemic. Through the mobile and on-campus efforts, tens of thousands of Arkansans were tested in 2020.
• A new center for patients undergoing chemotherapy was unveiled in November at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Located on the institute’s sixth floor, Infusion Center B will primarily serve patients with blood cancers, such as multiple myeloma, leukemia and lymphoma, as well as those participating in clinical trials.
• Also in November, the university received a $500,000 gift from an anonymous donor to support the creation of a new regional campus in El Dorado. The gift will have a far-reaching impact, not only for El Dorado, but for patients in South Arkansas and across the state.
• A space for parents with babies in the UAMS neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was transformed in January into the first Ronald McDonald Family Room in central Arkansas.
• Alexander Burnett, M.D., a UAMS gynecologic surgeon, in March became one of only a handful of surgeons worldwide and the first in the United States at the cutting edge of a new scarless and almost painless technique for hysterectomy.
• The Department of Family and Preventive Medicine in July received $2.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a five-year project to increase colorectal cancer screening in Arkansas.
• The UAMS Health Women’s Center opened in August, bringing the best of women’s health services from the university to one convenient Midtown location away from but not far from the main campus.
• The University of Arkansas Board of Trustees in September approved joint ventures between UAMS, Baptist Health and Arkansas Children’s to expand access to radiation therapy as well as to establish the state’s first proton therapy center.

 

EDUCATION

• The Federal Communications Commission in June provided $940,000 in funding to the university to deliver medical information to patients and providers across the state and for digital health technology to treat patients for COVID-19. It made possible digital health consultations to more than 300 medical facilities on COVID-19 best practices in the delivery of patient care.
• Using technology to extend the expertise of UAMS physicians and nurses to underserved areas of rural Arkansas has long been a goal of the university’s Institute for Digital Health & Innovation. The institute in October secured funding of $999,993 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the digital health training of health care professionals, students, business and community leaders, consumers and patients in the Arkansas Delta.
• To address the physician shortage in Arkansas, especially in rural parts of the state, UAMS received $2.83 million in additional funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to improve access by expanding efforts to train and retain primary care physicians.
• The Baptist Health-UAMS Family Medicine Residency program in April received a full accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The program was started in 2019 to provide more positions to train medical school graduates and address the physician shortage.
• Arkansas INBRE, which promotes biomedical research with programs for undergraduate students and faculty statewide, in May had its federal funding renewed for $18.4 million over the next five years. While the UAMS is the lead institution, INBRE grants and programs have impacted nearly all colleges and universities in the state during the 20-year history of the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence program.
• Also in May, degrees and certificates were conferred to 914 UAMS graduates of the university’s five colleges and graduate school. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no commencement ceremony was held. Several end-of-the-academic-year events as well as white coat ceremonies in the fall also took place virtually.

 

RESEARCH

• College of Public Health faculty, staff and students volunteered to establish a contact tracing call center on campus to help stop the spread of COVID-19 virus. If a person is confirmed to have the illness, contact tracing can help to identify people with whom they have been in contact while they were infectious and ask those people to quarantine themselves.
• Faculty and researchers in the College of Public Health also began and have continued doing modeling and projections for the spread of COVID-19 to help with planning for patient care and the public health response.
• UAMS researchers also completed a study that showed people who recently had been in the hospital were 24 times less likely to develop a COVID-19 infection than the general population.
• Despite all the challenges of the global pandemic, 2020 was a boom year in funding UAMS and its affiliate research institutions saw research funding grow by 43% this past year, with $158.1 million in grants by the end of the fiscal year, June 30
• Led by Marjan Boerma, Ph.D., a team of UAMS researchers in August received a five-year $11.4 million federal grant to continue research into the side effects of cancer therapies, including radiation and chemotherapies.
• Fenghuang “Frank” Zhan, M.D., Ph.D., Myeloma Center research director, in June was awarded two federal grants totaling almost $3.14 million to study the molecular genetics and drug resistance of multiple myeloma, the second-most common blood-related cancer.
• Jinhu Xiong, Ph.D., a UAMS and assistant professor, in October received a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how physical activity improves bone health, with possible implications for bone loss from osteoporosis and aging.
• A first-of-its-kind study by UAMS Northwest Regional Campus researchers will test whether deliveries of healthy food, along with recipes and education materials, can help reduce type 2 diabetes among food-insecure rural Arkansans. The National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced this fall it would provide $2.5 million in funding for the five-year, research effort.
• The National Cancer Institute awarded a five-year grant of more than $1.86 million to UAMS to fund research aimed at reducing long-term neurological damage caused by a common cancer treatment regimen.