Kalousek Named Dean of an Osteopathic School
COMP Associate Dean Kay Kalousek, DO '89, MSHPE '94, is the first COMP graduate to become dean of an osteopathic medical school. A.T. Still University (ATSU) announced last month that Kalousek had been appointed dean of the School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (SOMA) in Mesa, Ariz. She will begin her duties on July 1, after being involved with COMP and WesternU for nearly 27 years, ever since she walked onto the campus as a student in 1985.
WesternU's David Connett Named Physician of the Year
Associate Dean of Clinical Services and Medical Director of the WesternU Clinic Systems David Connett, DO '84, was selected as the 2012 Physician of the Year by the Osteopathic Physicians & Surgeons of California (OPSC) during the organization's 51st Annual Convention in San Diego on February 11. Dr. Connett serves as a practicing family physician at both WesternU's Patient Care Center and the Rancho Cucamonga Patient Care Center. According to OPSC, the Awards Committee annually selects an individual who best represents the qualities and traits of an outstanding osteopathic physician and surgeon as the recipient of the Physician of the Year Award. Dedication and devotion to the profession, activity in the osteopathic community, and activity in the community in which the individual lives and works are all considered.
Geraldine O'Shea Receives 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award
The Osteopathic Physicians & Surgeons of California (OPSC) presented their 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award to Geraldine O'Shea, DO '93, on February 11 during their 51st Annual Convention in San Diego. Since 1998, Dr. O'Shea has served as the Medical Director and as a practicing Internal Medicine physician for the Foothill Women's Medical Center in Jackson, CA. (She is joined in this practice by her husband Mark Eastman, DO '93.) Dr. O'Shea was previously Chief of Staff with Talbert Medical Group in Chandler, AZ, and she has maintained staff privileges with Sutter Amador Hospital since 1998, having served as Medical Director of the Diabetes Education Program there since 2005.
Mackintosh Named Associate Dean
Susan Mackintosh, DO' 92, a fourth generation osteopathic physician, is back at COMP as the Associate Dean of Student Affairs. For the past three years, she served WesternU in the capacity of Director of Interprofessional Education (IPE) where she was responsible for the development and implementation of the IPE program for all nine graduate healthcare programs, while maintaining her COMP faculty role, participating on the curriculum committee, and advising and mentoring several medical students. She has held several leadership positions throughout her career, including the role of President of the Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons of California from 2010 – 2011.
COMP-Northwest
On April 12, representatives from the Lebanon Chamber of Commerce presented a check for more than $16,000 to COMP-Northwest for the "Tools of the Trade" program. The donation will equip incoming students from the Class of 2016 with medical bags, which is the second installment of a four-year agreement to connect new students to the Lebanon business community. Lebanon Chamber Board of Directors President Carol Cromwell, COMP-Northwest Executive Associate Dean Paula Crone, DO '92, and five medical students who received the first installment of medical bags in July 2011, attended the event.
The Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce recognized COMP-Northwest as their Small Business of the Year during their annual community awards banquet on March 13.
The COMP-Northwest building is up for an award, as one of the Daily Journal of Commerce's (OR) Top Projects. It is one of 99 structures that will vie for most outstanding building project in Oregon and Southwest Washington, with the winner to be announced on May 10.
Alumni News
In honor of Black History Month, Nanotchka Chumley, DO '93, gave a lunch lecture on diabetes here on campus on February 24.
Gabriel Chiu, DO '96, was named one of LA's best cosmetic surgeons in the April/May 2012 issue of LA Confidential Magazine.
On March 14, Kate McCaffrey, DO '96, presented: "Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment in the Clinical Setting – Medical Training Today" on campus.
Atul Bembi, DO '00, started West Point Medical Center in Fontana, CA, in October 2005 in a new state of the art building designed specifically for the needs of an Urgent Care Facility. West Point Medical Center is serving the needs of more than 2,000 patients every month from all three of their locations in Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernardino.
Erik Austin, DO '01, is owner/operator of Austin Dermatology Center in San Diego, CA. Dr. Austin is a Board Certified Dermatologist & Dermatologic Surgeon and is an osteopathic physician listed in Who's Who in Medicine and Health Care.
Daniel Dickerson, DO '01, is an Assistant Research Psychiatrist, Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA. He is one of only five members of the 2011-2013 Fellows Cohort of the Indigenous HIV/AIDS Research Training (IHART) program. Dr. Dickerson earned an MPH from A.T. Still University; and his research focuses on substance abuse among American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) and developing culturally tailored substance abuse treatments for AI/ANs.
Ginger Leon, DO '01, is practicing at Bella Aesthetica in Ontario, CA.
Renee Perry, DO '02, is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, and is currently practicing at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA.
Assistant Professor Dat Quoc Trinh, DO '03, MSHPE '04, presented a poster on "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Among Medical Students" at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine national conference that took place in Long Beach, CA, February 2-4. His presentation generated great interest and awareness of this disorder from the medical school level into residency.
Francisco Merino, DO '03, is currently with West Point Medical Center, where his ability to speak Spanish fluently allows him to work closely with Spanish speaking patients who are less familiar with the English Language. He also provides a variety of aesthetic and corrective skin treatments.
Vu Dinh, DO '06, is now a general surgeon at Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, NY.
Ryan Armour, DO '07, will be joining the Mercy Hospital Medical Group in Sacramento on August 1. He will complete his fellowship in neurology at Cleveland Clinic on June 1.
Pei Chi Wu, DO '08, is specializing in family medicine at Marathon Medical Group in Anaheim Hills, CA.
Faculty News
Assistant Professor Brian Kraatz was part of an international team from Germany, France, the United States and the United Arab Emirates that published a study in Biology Letters on February 22 regarding seven-millian-year-old footprints from the Arabian Desert that provide the oldest known evidence of how elephant ancestors interacted socially. The Mleisa1 site in the United Arab Emirates features exceptionally long trackways of a single herd of at least 13 individuals. The herd walked through mud and left footprints that hardened, were buried, and then re-exposed by erosion. Analysis of trackway stride lengths reveals the herd contained a diversity of sizes, from adults to a young calf, making this the earliest direct evidence of social structure in prehistoric elephants ever discovered.
Professor Lony Castro recently received a Certificate of Appreciation from the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health for her work as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Labor Induction Education Projects. She and the Department of Public Health will be Co-hosting a webinar related to this project on Friday, May 4, Noon to 1:00 p.m. The topic of the Webinar is "Labor Induction Trends in the County of San Bernardino-The Obstetric Providers Role." CME units will be offered. Call 1-800-227-3034 for more information or to register for the webinar.
Assistant Dean Gail Singer-Chang and Assistant Professor Scott Helf, DO '99, presented "A Preliminary Analysis of the Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Osteopathic Medical Student Performance and Success" at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) Annual Meeting March 28 in Washington, DC. Drs. Juan Ramirez and Neil Patel of WesternU's Office of Institutional Research were instrumental in the study. Dr. Helf also presented "Use of Dashboard Portal to Manage Student Progress." at that same meeting, Vice Provost Sheree Aston, Associate Dean Susan E. Mackintosh, DO '92, Assistant Professor John T. Pham and IPE Manager Dennis Muscato presented "Inter-Institutional Interprofessional Education (IPE)" at the AACOM meeting.
Assistant Professor Mathew Wedel gave an invited lecture titled "Flip-top heads, air-filled bones, and teenage pregnancy: how sauropod dinosaurs got so big" at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County on March 8. Also, the new dinosaur Brontomerus, described by Dr. Wedel in 2011, is featured in the April 2012 issue of the children's magazine Highlights, on page 40. The color artwork for the piece is freely available at http://svpow.com/2011/11/14/more-brontomerus-artwork-from-highlights-magazine/. A paper published by Dr. Wedel and colleagues in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica earned an Honorable Mention from the journal for Most Cited Paper in 2010. The paper, "Head and neck posture in sauropod dinosaurs inferred from extant animals," is freely available for download. Dr. Wedel is also second author on a new paper published recently in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, titled, "The early evolution of postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in sauropodomorph dinosaurs." Further, Dr. Wedel and Vanessa Graff, MSMS '12 presented talks at Cal Paleo 2012, the California Paleontology Symposium, at UC Riverside on April 14. Graff's talk was titled, "Evaluating hypotheses of neck support in sauropod dinosaurs," and Wedel's talk was, "What pneumaticity tells us about sauropods, and vice versa."
Associate Professor Marek Malecki was an invited speaker at the inaugural International Symposium on Point of Care Testing in San Francisco on February 19. He presented "Molecular Profiling of Cancer with Point-of-Care Tests." The microarray devices, which he designed, developed and presented, may play a critical role in the early diagnosis of patients in the areas with poorly developed health care systems, sailors on the seas, or soldiers in the remote battle fields. Dr. Malecki also joined a panel of internationally recognized experts to publish a series of lectures on the leading edge of early molecular diagnosis of cancer including Next Generation of Sequencing on DVD: Molecular Med TRI-CON Conference: CTCs from Bench to Bed.
Assistant Professor Vicki Wedel participated in the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meetings in Atlanta. While there, Dr. Wedel and Shirley Hsieh, MSMS '11, DMD '15, presented a poster titled "I'd give my eye teeth for cementum increment analysis." The Graduate College of Biomedical Sciences funded Hsieh's trip. In addition, Dr. Wedel was fortunate to provide her mentor, forensic anthropologist and provost of UC Santa Cruz Dr. Alison Galloway with the T. Dale Stewart Lifetime achievement award.
Professor Radha Sarma, Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Disease for the Western Diabetes Institute and COMP, has been accepted as a Fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography (FASE). Fellowship with the American Society of Echocardiography recognizes the dedicated ASE member with a diverse set of skills and comprehensive knowledge of all aspects of echocardiography.
Congratulations to Associate Professor Beatrice Saviola for her ten years of service to WesternU, and to Assistant Professor Katherine Mitsouras for her five years of service.
COMP recently announced the hiring of Jin Guo, MD, Assistant Professor, Pathology
Student News
Fourth-year COMP students gathered on campus on March 16 in the Health Education Center to celebrate Match Day. The event was suggested by Bryan Tucker, DO '12, as a chance for the class to celebrate the achievement of getting their first jobs as doctors. Class members enjoyed food and drink, while sharing with one another where they had matched for their residency training. For many, it was the first time getting back together in more than a year, when they began their rotations.
Justin Roth, DO '12, will present an abstract at the Western Orthopaedic Association Annual Meeting in Portland, OR, on June 15
COMP students, along with those from the Physician Assistant program and the College of Optometry held a free pediatric clinic on March 9 at the Boys and Girls Club of Pomona Valley. The students conducted physical examinations, blood glucose screenings and vision screenings, and provided educational activities focused on hand washing, nutrition, exercise, the human body and eye care.
The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Greater Santiam announced the launch of the Skills, Mastery, and Resistance Training Moves program with the help of students from the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest. The SMART Moves program helps youth confront the risks of alcohol, tobacco and drug use, and the issues of bullying and teen pregnancy.
Jenny Amin, DO '13, had her abstract accepted for the Healthy People Conference on March 6-7 at Loma Linda University. Her poster is titled, "Disparities in stroke awareness among Hispanics and Non-Hispanics: a community based participatory research (CBPR) project."
Read the latest updates from the students themselves in the latest Student Government Association Newsletter.
Upcoming Events & Conferences
May 12: Register now for COMP's annual CME Conference on campus and earn up to ten AOA Category 1-A credits. The cost is just $45 for alumni and includes breakfast and lunch.
For information on any of these events and activities, or to RSVP, please email alumni@westernu.edu.
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