With autumn speaking engagements and conferences in full swing, a number of physicians within the UA Department of Medicine have been on the road recently. Among those are:
Liver Research Institute Director Thomas D. Boyer, MD, is traveling to Washington, DC, for a National Institutes of Health meeting Oct. 21. He is a member of the subcommittee Digestive Diseases and Nutrition C within the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). He’s been a member of this subcommittee for more than three years. It meets and reviews grants several times a year.
Dr. Boyer also will be lecturing Oct 31 in Houston on “Decompensated Cirrhosis: Prevention and Management of Complications of Portal Hypertension,” at the 16th Annual Hot Topics in Liver Disease Conference sponsored by CHI St. Luke’s Health - Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Director of the Adult Diabetes Program at UA COM – T, Merri Pendergrass, MD, PhD, will be among presenters Sun., Oct. 25, at the grand opening of the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery in Dubai. Dr. Pendergrass was on the faculty at Harvard and directed the diabetes program at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital before coming to Tucson.
She’s most excited about being onstage with Paul Farmer, MD, founder of Partners in Health and chair of Harvard’s Department of Global Health and Medicine. “He’s a humanitarian, a brilliant doctor and a saint. He’s doing what we all say we got into medicine to do. He lives selflessly and travels around the world doing this amazing work.”
UA Department of Medicine Chair Monica Kraft, MD, will be participating in a case-based interactive panel discussion on "Optimal Strategies to Evaluate and Manage Patients With Refractory Asthma" at the CHEST Annual Meeting in Montreal, Canada, on Oct. 27. It's part of the Subject Track for Education Performance (STEP) program. The conference is hosted by the American College of Chest Physicians.
Prabir Roy-Chaudhury, MD, UA Nephrology division chief, spent much of late summer and early fall on speaking engagements and industry events. He was the plenary keynote at the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology annual meeting, Sept. 5-9, in Canberra, Australia, where he was recognized at a dinner by Australian Minister of Health Sussan Ley. He was an invited speaker at the Japanese Society of Dialysis Access in Hiroshima, Sept. 12, and an NIDDK workshop on Hemodialysis Vascular Access in Washington, DC, Sept. 16-17. And he participated in the first American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Dialogue on Transformative Research, Sept. 18; ASN Program Committee and Post Graduate Education Committee meetings, Sept. 19; and Critical Path Initiative for Drug Development Tools in Kidney Disease, Sept. 25, in DC. He also was a presenter at the ISHD Hemodialysis University 2015, Oct. 2, in Chicago.
The Division of Nephrology will be well represented at the ASN Annual Meeting, aka Kidney Week, in San Diego, Nov. 3-8, where Asjad Sardar, MD, has a poster presentation and Amy Sussman, MD, will be recognized as a mentor in the STARS (Students & Residents) Program for spearheading a novel medical student elective in nephrology that allows multidisciplinary exposure to the discipline of kidney diseases. 
Dr. Roy-Chaudhury will chair an ASN pre-course on curing kidney disease, Nov. 4, and has two invited presentations, six poster sessions and two sessions where he’ll serve as moderator. Meanwhile, you can see plenty from Pradeep D. Kadambi, MD, a member of the ASN Communications Committee for the past three years, including several podcasts online of him reporting on the annual meeting available via a mobile app from iTunes and google play. For a sample, visit this Facebook link to one of Dr. Kadambi’s podcasts last year in Philadelphia. Or tune into the ASN Kidney Week podcasts webpage during the event.
Dr. Kadambi also has served four years with the AST Transplant Nephrology Fellowship Training Accreditation Program, which accredits institutions with programs to provide specialty transplant nephrology training. Duties include two to three site visits per year, including one in September to inspect the program at Massachusetts General Hospital. It passed with flying colors.
Cardiologist Karl B. Kern, MD, co-director of the UA Sarver Heart Center, is on the program for ECCU (Emergency Cardiovascular Care Update) 2015, Dec. 8-11, in San Diego, where official instructor updates for new resuscitation guidelines for cardiac arrest victims are on the agenda. Dr. Kern was also chosen recently as vice chair of the American Heart Association National Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee.
If you’ve got a speaking engagement or event at which you’re a presenter or panelist, please send a note about it to DOM communications coordinator David Mogollón.
—David Mogollón