Issue link: http://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1372819
29 The $1-million endowed Virendra C. Patel, M.D., and Urvashi V. Patel Scholarship is established, giving preference to KUSM-W medical students who are from or are interested in practicing in southeast Kansas. 2018 2020 2018 The school has goals of further diversifying its faculty and student population, including ways to help students with limited income get funds for medical school, according to Minns. up research When KUSM-Wichita was created, it was intended to be a school that focused primarily on medical education and clinical services. "If you bring great students and great faculty together, you're going to have folks who want to and are capable of performing research," said Pate, the Pediatrics department chair. Research in the form of clinical trials and other studies soon began to grow on the campus. Some departments such as Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences built up their own infrastructure to support clinical research. Now KUSM-Wichita is conducting clinical trials in many areas of medicine, in all age groups, with funding from pharmaceutical companies, the National Institutes of Health and private foundations, according to K. James Kallail, Ph.D., associate dean for research. Three years ago, KUSM-Wichita created an in-house clinical trials research oce, with Kallail heading up those eorts. In-house sta is making it easier to ramp up research eorts in more areas throughout the school, said Kallail and Tiany Schwasinger-Schmidt, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Clinical Research. "We're really broadening our scope to be all-inclusive and that's what we want. For any investigator who's interested in doing research, we want to help facilitate that for them, but we also have a mentorship aspect to what we're doing to help develop young investigators so they can go out and pursue their research interests and bring this care to their patients," said Schwasinger-Schmidt. Like many organizations, KUSM-Wichita has felt the eects of the COVID-19 pandemic. All classes moved online temporarily, and clinical experiences were temporarily halted in mid-March 2020, but returned by the early summer. The downturn in the local economy is expected to slow down growth in the school's fundraising eorts and state-supported budget. But what's not in question is that the school is improving patient care in the state, region and beyond. our proven progress "We've proven ourselves with our outstanding faculty, our community partnerships and students who want to be the future of medicine and health care. We are going to sustain and continue building upon our visionary foundation." Dean Garold Minns, M.D. "If you bring great students and great faculty together, you're going to have folks who want to and are capable of performing research." Brian Pate, M.D., Chair of Pediatrics The Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Clinical Trial Unit changes its name to KU Wichita Center for Clinical Research, and moves to the Oce of Research. KUSM-W Center for Clinical Research begins participation in Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial. ONWARD