Medical School News
From the Dean
Although 23-year-old Jerrad Bergren completed his anticancer therapy 10 years ago, he’ll never be totally through. Doctors now know that childhood cancer therapies can lead to adverse health consequences years, and even decades, later.
And, as you will read in our cover story, a whole team of University physicians and scientists is learning how to protect patients against these “late effects.” When Bergren sees his oncologist, Joseph Neglia, M.D., M.P.H., for an annual checkup, there’s a virtual army behind them—researchers and clinicians, like Dan Mulrooney, M.D., M.S., and others, who are identifying late effects, providing follow-up care, launching an international childhood cancer database, and creating a research program on the long-term effects of cancer treatment in both children and adults.
The University of Minnesota Stroke Center, also featured in this issue, is another example of the power of collaboration. The center’s director, Adnan I. Qureshi, M.D., has assembled a world-class team of researchers and clinicians who are working to reduce the effects of stroke. Together, they are shortening the time between stroke onset and treatment, improving existing therapies through novel research, and training more interventional neurology fellows than any other program.
Such successful collaboration requires certain traits: flexibility, collegiality, tolerance, curiosity—characteristics that will get more attention under the Medical School’s new approach to admissions (see story on page 13). That approach emphasizes applicants’ commitment to improving the human condition, professional conduct, interpersonal skills, and dedication to lifelong learning.
Surely these are traits we all hope to find in our doctors—as Jerrad Bergren has—and in the colleagues who back us up.
Deborah E. Powell, M.D.
Dean, University of Minnesota Medical School
McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair
