By the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDICAL BRANCH
The University of Texas Medical Branch is ready to open a new state-of- the-art 150,000 square-foot hospital to serve patients in and around the League City and Clear Lake area. The community is invited to the ribbon-cutting at 4 p.m. May 3 followed by tours of the facility located at 2240 Interstate 45 in League City. The new hospital at the League City campus is an expansion of health care services that are provided at the medical branch’s primary and specialty care clinics in the Bay Area.
Wound clinic opens in Dickinson
The medical branch has opened a clinic that specializes in the treatment of acute, chronic or difficult-to-heal wounds. The clinic at 1804 FM 646 W. is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and closed on weekends. The clinic provides compression therapy, vacuum-assisted technology to close wounds, tissue replacement and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to promote faster healing. For information, call 281-967-7106.
Tesh receives prestigious award from Panama
Dr. Robert Tesh, who was the keynote speaker last week at the Pan-American Dengue Research Network Research meeting in Panama, also received the Gorgas Medal of Honor from the Panamanian government for his longtime efforts to science and medicine in the Americas. The medal is named for Dr. William Crawford Gorgas, surgeon general of the U.S. Army who helped create a mosquito-free zone so that workers could build the Panama Canal. Tesh, a professor of pathology, also is director of the medical branch’s World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arobviruses, the largest collection on earth.
Weaver, Vasilakis and Rossi speak at Dengue network meeting
Drs. Scott Weaver, Nikos Vasilakis and Shannan Rossi, also spoke at the same Dengue meeting and Rubing Chen had a poster on vector biology that was featured at the conference. The Dengue Research Network next meets in Galveston in 2018.
Nobel Prize winner speaks at UTMB
Paul L. Modrich, a winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, last week spoke to medical branch students about the “Mechanism in DNA Mismatch Repair.” Modrich and two other scientists shared the prize for discovering how cells repair their DNA and protect it. The speech was presented by the medical branch’s Biochemistry and Molecular Biology department and the Biological Chemistry Student Organization.
UTMB a leader in LGBT health care equality
The medical branch recently achieved “2016 Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality” status from the Human Rights Campaign and will be featured as an Equality Leader in the Healthcare Equality Index 2016 report. The Human Rights Campaign is the largest civil rights organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. The Index is the national LGBT benchmarking tool that evaluates health care facilities’ policies and practices related to the equity and inclusion of their LGBT patients, visitors and employees. The 2016 report evaluated more than 2,000 health care facilities nationwide and rated about 500 as leaders for LGBT health care equality.