Second Opinion

It has been my privilege since July 2004 to serve as interim executive vice president for health affairs. This is an exciting time to be associated with UofL's Health Sciences Center and at the center of a dynamic, innovative academic and clinical community.

The breadth and depth of teaching, research and public outreach undertaken by the School of Medicine, School of Dentistry, School of Nursing, the School of Public Health and Information Sciences is truly remarkable. These programs are further enhanced by the 17 centers and institutes that focus on a broad range of issues which impact the daily lives of individuals across the nation and the world, including birth defects, cancer treatment and prevention, and public safety and security.

As a result, the HSC is much more than a sum of its constituent parts -- researchers, faculty, staff, students and clinicians who share ideas, collaborate on research, learn from each other and share a commitment to excellence that is the common core for everything that we do.

This synergy between academic and practical, between research and clinical application, and between teaching and outreach stretches across the HSC and makes the University of Louisville a true powerhouse in the health sciences. It will be our goal to achieve excellence in all schools, centers and institutes and as a Health Sciences Center to achieve a balance of strength and emphasis of clinical programs, teaching and research.

The umbrella of life sciences extends well beyond the Health Sciences Center. We will seek collaboration, cooperation and synergy between the HSC, the Belknap Campus, the community at large and, eventually, the Shelby Campus.

Within the new Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, engineers from the Speed School of Engineering collaborate with a broad range of health sciences disciplines to find new treatments for heart disease. Researchers from nursing are collaborating with those from exercise physiology to help patients receive better outcomes from orthopedic surgery. Pediatricians are working with faculty who study early childhood development to understand how sleep affects learning and behavior in children. These are just a few examples of how partnerships are helping the university realize its potential for cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research.

Partnerships are also a key to providing outstanding clinical services and for bringing new treatments from the laboratory bench to the patient bedside. Our consortium model of an academic medical center is one of our greatest assets.

Our longstanding partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs provides invaluable training sites for our residents and students, and holds the promise of a new downtown veterans' facility.

With Kosair Children's Hospital (the 16th largest children's hospital in the United States), the university has a world-class facility in which to provide a full spectrum of pediatric medical and surgical clinical and educational programs. The Kosair Children's Hospital Research Institute houses world-class pediatric research in neurobiology, diabetes and the physiology of sleep.

Our partnership with Jewish Hospital provides exciting clinical programs in transplant medicine, hand surgery, family medicine and cardiovascular surgery. The Cardiovascular Innovation Institute will house exciting research into cardiac devices and myocardial regeneration. With Norton Healthcare, our clinical programs at Norton Hospital in orthopedics, spine, neurosurgery, women's health and psychiatry are complimented by research programs in spinal cord injury and pediatrics.

At the heart of every thriving academic medical center is a strong university hospital. Our University Hospital is nearing the vital transition from an historic public hospital into a modern university teaching hospital. Expertise longstanding in emergency medicine and trauma are now complimented by excellence in digestive diseases and high risk women's and neonatal services. And, of course, the James Graham Brown Cancer Center is well on its way with clinical and research programs that will result in its designation by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center.

The Health Sciences Center is an exciting and dynamic place. Research seeks to define new cancer drugs, mechanisms of myocardial preservation, the influences of the environment in heart function and the mechanisms of aging to mention a few.

Our School of Nursing continues to offer new and innovative programs, including an accelerated nursing degree and a recently approved doctoral program, while also contributing to our research agenda and receiving the remarkable ranking of 46 in the top 50 percent of schools that receive funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Our School of Dentistry has recently been designated in the top 10 percent of research by a dental school, and our new School of Public Health and Information Sciences is moving rapidly toward accreditation.

Teaching innovation, including curricular reform and the use of simulators and standardized patients, are improving our educational agenda. We are seeking to compliment our many outstanding clinical programs with new programs in pulmonology and urology.

I am pleased to work with such a fine group of dedicated individuals and to have the support of the Louisville community in our quest to make the HSC an integral part of one of the nation's premier metropolitan research universities.

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