Second Opinion

At the University of Louisville, future health-care professionals learn that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. A patient is much more than a collection of symptoms and diagnoses. We know that individual health is affected by family history, genetics, environment, personal relationships and a wide variety of factors that may range from workplace stress to favorite hobbies.

Likewise, the UofL Health Sciences Center is more than the simple sum of the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Public Health and Information Sciences.

The excellence we have achieved in many areas is amplified through our partnerships with others in the Louisville community, including Norton Healthcare; Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare; the Veterans Administration; UofL Health Care; Owensboro Medical Health Center; the Trover Clinics and others in western Kentucky; the Louisville Metro Health Department; local, state and federal government entities; gratis faculty who volunteer their time to teach; and the hundreds of community organizations, donors and alumni who believe in our mission.

While the health-care field is challenging and we are often discouraged by reports of seemingly unsolvable issues -- epidemics ranging from childhood obesity to the threat of avian flu, disparities and lack of access to care -- I believe that the achievements made here at UofL through collaboration and cooperation provide a reason for optimism.

In these valuable partnerships, there is a common theme: organizations that care about solving a problem, creating a medical breakthrough, stimulating economic development or simply making the world a better, safer and healthier place to live, coming together to turn a vision into a reality.

UofL has, for example, many valuable partnerships with Norton Healthcare and Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare.

One that is particularly noteworthy is the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center (KSCIRC). An investment of $9 million by UofL and the Commonwealth of Kentucky (through the Kentucky Spinal Cord and Head Injury Research Trust and the state's Research Challenge Trust Fund) with support from Norton Healthcare and the Frazier Rehab Institute has generated more than a three-fold return, as measured by extramural research funding.

Norton Healthcare and its leadership believed in the vision of Christopher Shields, M.D., chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, helping recruit his colleague, Scott Whittemore, Ph.D., from the Miami Paralysis Project. Both hold endowed chairs and have recruited additional leaders in the field with help from the Research Challenge Trust Fund, more commonly known as "Bucks for Brains."

Building on this success, Frazier Rehab Institute -- part of Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare -- joined forces with KSCIRC to recruit Susan Harkema, Ph.D., from UCLA to head the institute's rehabilitation program.

KSCIRC is now one of the largest spinal-cord injury research centers in the United States. It is in a unique position to conduct research that, through a close association with clinical colleagues in UofL's Department of Neurological Surgery, should ultimately lead to effective treatments for spinal cord injury.

None of this would be possible without partnerships.

Norton Healthcare and UofL also have partnered to build the 16th-largest children's hospital in the nation, recognized for excellence and innovation. One new venture, established with the help of Norton and Kosair Charities, is very close to my heart as a pediatrician and neonatologist -- the Kosair Charities Pediatric Clinical Research Unit (KCPCRU).

The KCPCRU is the region's first state-of-the-art clinical facility dedicated solely to conducting inpatient and outpatient pediatric clinical pharmacology studies aimed at understanding how children metabolize drugs differently and how we can apply these findings to provide better medical care for kids. Under the direction of Janice Sullivan, M.D., the unit also is one of 13 sites in the Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit Network, a cooperative group of clinical pediatric pharmacology research sites in the United States funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

These achievements would not be possible without partnerships.

UofL's track record of partnerships with Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare is beautifully illustrated by the work of Suzanne Ildstad, M.D., which you can read more about in this issue of Medicine.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that five years ago, the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute (CII) was an idea sparked by the innovative work of UofL's Laman Gray, M.D., and his colleagues. Today it is a freestanding research facility with a new scientific director -- internationally known bioengineering researcher Stuart Williams, Ph.D., who was recruited from the University of Arizona. His work complements the achievements of UofL's outstanding researchers and clinicians from the School of Medicine and the Speed School of Engineering who are working on the newest generation of heart-assist devices and combined therapies. As a result, the CII is gaining interest from companies and researchers around the world.

Attaining this level of excellence wouldn't be possible without partnerships.

UofL's alumni and friends know that our partnership with UofL Health Care has generated many benefits for Louisville, including the tremendous success of the James Graham Brown Brown Cancer Center in finding answers to cancer, in tremendous research growth and in clinical programs that, as cancer center director Donald Miller, M.D., Ph.D., says, have "turned the buses around" because cancer patients can now get state-of-the-art care in Louisville.

Serving Kentuckians right here in Kentucky wouldn't be possible without partnerships.

In our community and region, more Medicaid patients are satisfied or very satisfied with their health care than their counterparts across the nation because of UofL's partnerships with Norton Healthcare, Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare, UofL Health Care, the Louisville Jefferson County Primary Care Association and Passport Health Plans in implementing a Medicaid managed-care model. Rated one of the top plans in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, UofL doctors work with Passport to ensure continuity of primary care, culturally appropriate health education and access to specialty care under a model that has avoided millions of dollars in unnecessary health-care expenses while providing quality health care to 140,000 patients in Jefferson and 15 contiguous counties.

Innovative solutions like this are born of partnerships.

These examples -- as wonderful as they are -- don't do justice to the depth and breadth of the partnerships that make health care one of Louisville's strengths.

Larry N. Cook, M.D., is executive vice president for health affairs at the University of Louisville and a professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine.