Raising the profile of the College of Medicine
In 1920, only nine years after the founding of what is now the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), administrators O.W. Hyman and A.H. Wittenborg gave back part of their salaries to help keep the College of Medicine open.
A century later, executive dean David M. Stern, MD, doesn’t need to deliver that measure of devotion, but he is nonetheless on his way to leaving his own indelible stamp on the College of Medicine.
Since taking over in UTHSC’s centennial year of 2011, Stern has undertaken an impressive number of initiatives, including:
The formation of two new departments, Radiation Oncology and Genetics, Genomics and Informatics.
The recruitment and hiring of more than a dozen prominent doctors from leading hospitals and universities across the nation.
The formation of a citizens advisory board composed of community leaders such as current and former CEOs and executives, an educator, a restaurateur, a TV news anchor, the mayors of Memphis and Shelby County and the Tennessee Senate Majority Leader, Mark Norris. The board is chaired by David Levine, former CEO of ResortQuest International.
One of Stern’s goals is to raise the profile of the College of Medicine, and by extension UTHSC, in Memphis and in so doing boost the reputation of the school nationally. The College of Medicine is one of six colleges that make up UTHSC.
Speaking of his relationship with community leaders, Stern said, “I run a concierge service. I give out my cell phone number to everybody. I say, ‘You call me if you have a problem, and if you do, I’ll find you a doctor on the spot and help you link up with that doctor.’
“I always say there’s a charge for using my concierge service. And what’s the charge? I say you have to be my ambassador and say UT cares. So I’m trying to build a little different brand around the medical school.”
To take it a step further, Stern’s plan centers on an increased involvement in the healthcare needs of the underserved segments of Memphis’ population.
“I’m exceedingly interested in making it that the medical school really addresses the unmet medical needs and the problems of Memphis,” he said. “I feel the medical school has been somewhat isolated. When people think of medical care and medical problems in Memphis, they don’t think of the University of Tennessee. I’m aiming to change that.”
That theme is very much a part of Stern’s recruiting pitch to the doctors he has brought to UTHSC.
“The way that I recruit people to Memphis is I talk to them about the impact they can have here,” he said. “Let’s say when I recruited a wonderful guy from the University of Pittsburgh, Bennie Weksler (chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery), I said I wanted to see a difference in the mortality of lung cancer in this city.”
The recruitment of doctors, the involvement in the city, the formation of a citizen’s advisory board – they’re all intertwined within Stern’s vision for the College of Medicine.
The advisory board, formed just over a year ago, has met a half-dozen times or so.
“They make suggestions, and I’m listening,” Stern said. “I can’t be more grateful to this group because it’s worked in every way I can think of.”
As for his overall vision, he says he is “always remembering that caring for the vulnerable population, from children’s health to the aged, veterans, the underserved population of the inner city, that’s one of the special areas where we can have a very great impact. And, of course, the reason for that is that they don’t have the level of care we wish they had.
“If you think that the combination of obesity, diabetes, some substance abuse . . . those things kind of provide a substream for increased mortality and morbidity throughout the life cycle, from infant mortality to stroke to cardiovascular disease and cancer. Because we have those things on a scale that is greater than many other places, that’s the opportunity for my recruits to have an impact.
“So in a sense I say to them, ‘Your laboratory is Memphis.’ I don’t mean that the people here are guinea pigs in a negative sense, but tools that you have to (help) improve the health of this population. This is the place to do it here, and if it works here it’s going to be a model that’ll be robust enough most likely to work elsewhere.”
Stern grew up on Long Island. His mother was a music teacher and his father the owner of a small jewelry store. He attended Yale and then earned his medical degree at Harvard.
“Except for a brief sojourn at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, I was at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia in New York, and that’s where I spent a portion of my career where I was a scientist. I studied blood vessels. That was my thing.”
At Columbia he ran a center for vascular and lung pathobiology.
“That was one of the big research operations that the university had,” Stern said. “I began being more used to building programs than actually doing the science. I enjoyed building programs. So I thought maybe I can run a medical center instead of just a vascular biology institute. It’s sort of like a conductor, instead of conducting a wind ensemble, maybe I could conduct the whole orchestra.”
Stern’s desire is to not only improve UTHSC’s reputation but, more tangibly, its place in various national rankings. While rankings can be a bit of a beauty contest, he says, and UTHSC is hampered somewhat by not having its own hospital, the fact that UT-trained physicians are working at facilities throughout Memphis is a major plus.
“I want you to know that I do have a national focus,” he said. “I’m very interested in making it so that by having an impact locally, we’ll have an impact nationally.”