Volunteers from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy and nutrition majors spent over a month organizing the event, which included customized consultations, awareness sessions on healthy eating habits and how to prevent or contain diabetes, and blood glucose testing. The goal was to improve understanding about the disease's prevalence and to show how medicine, nutrition and exercise regimes are crucial to treatment, said Dr. Mona Haidar, an instructor and coordinator of the medical school's Social Medicine and Global Health program.

The day-long events, which attracted over 200 residents, were held in collaboration with the Children and Youth Center in Shatila, the Palestine Association for Children's Encouragement of Sport (PACES) and national diabetes organization DiaLeb. The activities were held to mark World Diabetes Day, observed annually on November 14.

"Such awareness activities are crucial in giving LAU the opportunity to reach out to communities in Lebanon," said Chant Kazandjian, a nursing student. "Because of a lack of education and resources, residents like those in Shatila have a tremendous knowledge deficit when it comes to health and healthy behavior."

Diabetes, caused by the inability to produce insulin, is one of the biggest health epidemics of the modern era. The World Health Organization projects that diabetes deaths will double between 2005 and 2030, while figures show that the disease is almost four times as common as all forms of cancer combined.

According to the National Diabetes Organization (DiaLeb), around 20.2% of Lebanon's population suffers from diabetes. However, with poor national awareness or screening programs, only half of those with it are aware of their condition.

Instances of diabetes may be higher in areas of Lebanon like Shatila- researchers have found that those living in poverty are much more likely to develop the illness and to suffer from complications, such as amputations, blindness, or cardiovascular disease. Other social determinants of health, such as poor housing, diet and sedentary lifestyles, can also exacerbate the condition.

For medical student Fahed AbdelFattah Al-Ghanim, participating in the day's events was an important opportunity to build upon knowledge learnt in the classroom. "You get to see patients from many different backgrounds, which improves your communication skills," he said.
"Another thing I found enriching today was that all health faculties at LAU collaborated to produce a successful event. The interaction between the different health disciplines better prepares us for treating patients later on in our careers."

Loulya Chahine, a medical student and president of LAU's Social Medicine Society likewise found the day valuable. "It's a real privilege to have this experience. Not only did I get to interact with patients and lend a hand in a less fortunate community, but it immersed me into the kind of world in which I'll be working in a few years' time."

Nutrition students made a preliminary visit to the camp to understand what food was available to camp residents, said Dima Ousta, internship coordinator for nutrition majors at the School of Arts and Sciences. "By doing this we could tailor our nutritional advice to provide accurate and realistic information. We cannot just tell them to eat low-fat products because these are not available in the camps or are quite expensive."

According to Dr. Ghada Khoury, assistant professor at the School of Pharmacy and NAPHASS advisor, this activity provided pharmacy students with a better understanding of their role in the community. "It also highlighted the importance of interprofessional collaboration in enhancing the quality and effectiveness of patient care," she added.

Activities culminated in a football match between LAU volunteers and PACES. LAU suffered a rather spectacular 10-3 defeat, but no one really seemed to mind.
 

This highly prestigious award honors an outstanding woman physician or scientist in North America who has furthered the practice and understanding of medicine and has made significant contributions in a field beyond medicine—such as humanities, arts or social sciences.

“She has been a pioneer in recognizing the contributions of others; her pioneering, unique, caring, generous, passionate, and humane contributions to medicine, nursing, and public health, the world over, are now being recognized,” says LAU President Dr. Joseph G. Jabbra spreading the news.

Eckhert, a pediatrician, is professor of family medicine and community health, professor in the graduate school of nursing and adjunct professor in public health at the University of Massachusetts medical school and a senior lecturer in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She currently works as the director of academic programs for Partners Harvard Medical International.

She was appointed interim dean of LAU’s School of Medicine in October 2010.

“Dr. Eckhert’s contributions to our School of Medicine and to UMC-RH have been, and will continue to be, significant and major in the advancement of both,” says Jabbra.

Indeed, Eckhert was instrumental in the creation of LAU’s medical school, a reflection of her widespread experience in academic medicine and in global health.

“Dedicated to the mentoring of students, Eckhert is an innovator in areas of medical investigation,” continues Jabbra.

Before taking on her Lebanese experience, Eckhert went to Africa, and Haiti, working with Project HOPE in primary care training in many sites around the world. She took a sabbatical year spent teaching at the University of Zimbabwe School of Medicine before landing at LAU Byblos where she first taught for two months. She has helped develop the governance and regulatory structure for the world’s first free health care zone in the U.A.E.

The Alma Dea Morani award is presented in the memory of Dr. Alma Dea Morani (1907-2001) who was the first woman to be admitted to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. As the daughter of a famous sculptor, Morani combined her artistic talents with the emerging specialty of plastic surgery. Throughout her career she maintained her skill and interest as an artist and art collector.
“I feel very privileged to be given this recognition particularly considering the high caliber of women who received the award in the past,” says Eckhert.

“I am truly honored,” she enthuses.

Like Morani, Eckhert shares a profound appreciation for art and literature. Highly inspired by the life of pioneering women, Eckhert wrote “A Lady Alone” which is a one-woman play about the life of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States.

The Alma Dea Morani Renaissance Woman Award is presented by the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine; this program is hosted by the Archives for Women in Medicine.

The conference, titled “Healthcare Beyond Borders” and jointly held by LAU, UMC-RH and the American Lebanese Medical Association (ALMA), was largely aimed at helping Lebanon progress medically and raising awareness about common health problems and methods of prevention. The conference was held under the patronage of Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

“The distinguishing feature of conditions and diseases such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension, renal disease and cardiovascular disease, is the risk factors they have in common — among them the lack of physical activity, and smoking,” said Director General of the Ministry of Public Health Dr. Walid Ammar during the welcoming ceremony.

“This very fact puts raised awareness, clinical guidance and behavioral changes at the core of disease-prevention strategies,” he added.

The program was divided into sessions focusing on various medical topics and fields including obesity, strokes, infectious diseases, oncology, cardiology and dermatology. Organizers say the conference was intended for all health care professionals, including general and specialized physicians, nurses and pharmacists.

“What ALMA has been doing is connecting physicians in the West to their homeland in Lebanon,” said Issam Raad, president-elect of ALMA. “Part of what we want to achieve is the exchange of information — but we also want to be directly involved, because at the end of the day we are committed to the wellbeing of our country.”

LAU President Dr. Joseph G. Jabbra told an audience of conference participants that their presence represented two “shining realities” — the importance of roots and love of one's country, on the one hand, and on the other the “passionate commitment” of Lebanese doctors worldwide to finding cures.

“They are committed to making sure that they tackle, tame and find cures to some of the most intractable diseases affecting not only Lebanese society, but society the world over,” Jabbra said.

During the event, ALMA presented $3,000 scholarships to five students selected on the basis of academic excellence and social need. All five recipients were second-year medical students, hailing from LAU, the American University of Beirut, the University of Balamand, the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik and Lebanese University.

The conference was the first of its kind to be jointly organized by LAU, UMC-RH and ALMA.
 

The event, hosted at the University Medical Center- Rizk Hospital, is a rite of passage for medical students who, in the presence of beaming friends and family, are escorted by one of their instructors to the stage and cloaked in a ceremonial white coat.

By donning the white coat the medical students make an unspoken vow to put the interests of their patients before their own.

Dr. Lynn Eckhert, interim dean of LAU’s School of Medicine, encouraged the students to always endeavor to be worthy of the respect bestowed upon physicians in society.

“Read, question, and read,” advises Eckhert, reminding the budding doctors that their chosen career path entails life-long learning.

In addition, she cautions that commitment to academic excellence is only one part of the equation, arguing that the human element—caring and empathizing with the patient is of principal importance.

“Being a physician is less about curing people as it is about caring for people,” Eckhert said.

“Welcome to clinical rotations, a place where people other than your mom and dad call you doctor," Sara Araji, a third year medical student who earned her white coat last year, said triggering laughter among the audience.
Araji then described clinical rotations as a time when indeed “the patient’s care takes a central role—this is a world where your time is not your own.”

Stressing the importance of comradeship, Araji offers advice to the younger generation of medical students, recommending they remain close “through thick and thin” and to never allow competition to jeopardize their personal relationships.

Indeed, the students’ close bonds and camaraderie were clearly on display as each took to the stage amidst enthusiastic cheering from classmates.

The cheering was just as fervent when Dr. Abdallah Sfeir, LAU’s outgoing provost, was honored with a white coat as a token of appreciation for his championing of the nascent medical school.

Dr. Mary Deeb, an associate professor at the School of Medicine, who emceed the event, explained that the white coat ceremony is also an important milestone for LAU’s young medical school considering the newly renovated university’s medical center.

UMC-RH, the primary LAU-affiliated clinical teaching and research facility, will allow LAU students an opportunity to gain practical training. Like other top medical facilities around the world, LAU’s School of Medicine is striving to be more responsive to the communities in which they practice.

As a result, UMC-RH has undergone a comprehensive transformation equipped with state-of-the-art equipment to attract and retain the top physicians in the country.

Resolve to practice medicine in Lebanon was in fact expressed by several of the medical students honored in the event.

“I plan to stay and work in Lebanon, this is my country” says Mohammad Khalife, a medical student who describes the white coat ceremony as “a dream come true.”

A similar sentiment is echoed by fellow student Nagham Faris, who says, “I am considering staying in Lebanon, I want to serve my community.”

Attributes of empathy and selflessness as well as a desire to serve the community are all character traits that are upheld as the tenets of medical excellence in the white coat ceremony.

Clinical pharmacists are increasingly integral to many health-care settings, but their discipline is in fact relatively young. Two major shifts in the American pharmacy profession precipitated the emergence of clinical pharmacy in the 1960s: a shift in the focus of pharmacy education from chemistry to biology, and in pharmacy practice from product to patient. The medical community had just begun to understand the costs and consequences of inappropriate use of medications, and the nascent field of clinical pharmacy — with its emphasis on patient education — made itself immediately valuable in this area.

Select U.S. pharmacy schools were soon offering the Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree, and the era soon saw the emergence of pharmacist-run drug information services, investigational drug services, and pharmacokinetics dosing. Two decades later, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) hosted the Hilton Head Conference, a landmark event that helped to establish once and for all the concept of pharmacy practice as a clinical profession, with an emphasis on the pharmacist role in direct patient care.

The need for clinical pharmacy services grew even more pressing with the expansion of healthcare delivery, development of new medications, rising drug costs and the increasingly complex pharmaceutical needs of an aging population. The most critical factor in the demand for clinical pharmacists, however, is the mounting concern for drug safety. Errors in prescribing, dispensing, and taking medications rank among the most common medical errors, annually harming about 1.5 million people, causing 7,000 deaths, and incurring more than $3.5 billion in added medical costs in U.S. hospitals.

Clinical pharmacy education and training have had to expand to meet this rising demand. The Pharm.D. degree is indeed now the only professional pharmacy degree offered in the U.S. (the Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy was abandoned in 2000). Pharm.D. programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) follow rigorous standards for didactic and experiential education, laying the foundation for clinical knowledge and preparing graduates for residencies, fellowships, and other post-graduate studies. As clinical pharmacists advanced in clinical knowledge and expertise, they have expanded the scope of their practice in hospitals and ambulatory care sites. Clinical pharmacists manage medication therapy independently or in collaboration with other healthcare professionals, educate healthcare professionals and patients about appropriate medication use, and generate clinical, translational, and outcome research.

The Institute of Medicine’s 2000 report, “To Err Is Human: building a safer health system,” noted that “the pharmacist has become an essential resource in modern hospital practice. Thus, access to his or her expertise must be possible at all times.” The institute’s 2007 report, “Preventing medication errors,” went even further, maintaining that the inclusion of pharmacists on the interprofessional team for patients receiving complex medication regimens substantially improves the quality of therapy, reducing medication errors and adverse drug events. Looking back over the last half-century, it is clear that clinical pharmacy has decisively reshaped and optimized patient outcomes from the use of medications. It is a matter of time before it becomes the norm.

Also participating in the visit were three international students currently completing an elective in social medicine and global health at LAU’s Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine (SOM).

Nima Sheth, a fourth-year medical student at the Saint Louis University in Missouri, joined the program because of her interest in social justice and her desire to work with the phenomenon of post-traumatic stress disorder among refugees.

“The team has great energy and everyone shows real empathy with the patients,” she says. “It’s good to be exposed to underprivileged environments, because there’s much more we can help the patients with here.”

More than 8,500 residents currently live in acute privation within the one-square-kilometer bounds of the Shatila camp, one of Beirut’s most impoverished communities.

Initially established in 2001 by physicians, medical students and volunteers from the American University of Beirut, VOC offers primary care services to camp residents every Thursday, and occasionally for half-days on Saturdays.

The clinic is not officially under the umbrella of any university. It is now staffed, however, largely by students and physicians from SOM’s Social Medicine and Global Health program.

Under the supervision of Dr. Mona Haidar, the program’s coordinator and an SOM instructor at LAU Byblos, and Dr. Myrna Doumit, associate professor and assistant dean at the Alice Chagoury School of Nursing, students participate in the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of patients.

“We believe in the team approach. One person can’t cover all of the patients’ needs, and we cannot function solo,” says Doumit.

“Inter-professional education is the founding pillar of healthcare education and delivery, and that’s what we’re implementing through VOC,” she notes, adding that the nutrition and social work programs will soon be joining.

VOC’s mission is to provide, at minimal or no cost, quality health services to underprivileged and neglected individuals in Lebanon, regardless of race, gender, geographic location and religious affiliation. VOC promotes a message of solidarity among both patients and practitioners.

Despite limited availability of medical equipment at the clinic, the LAU team provides reliable care and responsive support to VOC patients.

Since most Shatila residents can rarely afford the laboratory tests they need, however, financial support is needed to make the clinic an ongoing primary healthcare facility for its patients, as well as a comprehensive learning site for students.

Impressed with LAU students’ contributions to the clinic, Assistant Vice President for Development Robert Hollback hopes to find ways to increase the larger community’s involvement with the VOC.

“Students and faculty members are providing the only healthcare available at the clinic right now,” says Hollback, adding that sustainability remains an unresolved problem since the clinic relies mostly on donations.

“We currently have a $50,000 funding proposal, and we’re waiting for it to come through. But this is still not a sustainable source of funding,” he says.

Up to ten patients frequent the clinic every Thursday, and the numbers are steadily climbing.

“We want to attune our students to the idea that the patients are coming from a certain community, and tailor our care accordingly,” Haidar says, adding that community assessment lies at the core of the process.

Lara Oson, a third year medical student at LAU, finds the VOC experience to be genuinely gratifying.

“We get to see the patient from the very beginning, make a plan and discuss it with Dr. Haidar. It’s a big responsibility and we feel that we’re truly making a difference,” she says.

The gathering took place in an informal, friendly setting where faculty members introduced themselves to students and vice versa.

The event “set the spirit of the School of Medicine at LAU — we’re all one family,” says Dr. Zeinat Hijazi, LAU assistant dean for Medical Education.

First-year med student Serge Gabriel Geara agrees. “I like the human aspect of LAU, the kindness of the staff and faculty,” he says.

The gathering shed light on the School of Medicine’s innovative teaching approaches, which allow students to have early exposure to real patients in a clinical setting starting in their first year of study. More conventional programs delay the student–patient contact until the third and fourth years of study.

“This [early exposure] helps the students to better understand diseases because they get to examine their underlying causes, pathophysiology and symptoms at the same time,” explains Hijazi.

In addition to early clinical exposure, simulation training is also provided to all medical students so they can better understand the anatomy and physiological functions of the human body.

LAU’s School of Medicine focuses on small-group teaching and problem-based learning, where students are divided into groups for case discussions and exchange of ideas.

The new med class is “an exciting group of students who have a lot of talent. I hope they will learn quickly how to work together,” says Dr. Lynn Eckhert, interim dean of LAU’s School of Medicine.

At the same time, a lot of attention is given to each student individually, as they are also encouraged to think critically and come up with solutions on their own.

Continuous learning is also at the heart of medical education at LAU, according to Hijazi. “We want the young doctors who graduate to be lifelong learners,” she explains. “I believe that medical education starts at the medical school, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s for life.”

Eckhert says there will be a lot of focus on year-long community-based projects. First-year medical students will get the chance to visit a clinic in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, in order to increase their exposure to the impact of poor socio-economic conditions on patients and the development of their diseases.

“If you have diabetes, for example, and you’re wealthy, you probably have good insurance and can afford the medication and the equipment that goes with being a diabetic patient. If you live in poverty, managing diabetes is more challenging,” Eckhert explains.

In previous years, students could choose whether or not to volunteer in Shatila, but it has now become a crucial part of the curriculum that all students have to go through.

“They like the idea of giving back to the public,” says Eckhert, who hopes to engage students in more community work in the future, and to secure more simulation material.
 

The workshop was hosted by Dr. Nancy Hoffart, professor and founding dean of LAU’s Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing.

LAU’s IPE program is designed to prepare professionals in the university’s health and social care programs to function as effective, collaborative team members in order to improve health care and patient/client outcomes.

The program brings together students from the nursing, medicine, pharmacy, nutrition, and social work programs, to take part in IPE learning experiences in classroom, laboratory and clinical settings.

The aim of the retreat was to educate faculty about recent IPE developments and new approaches, which can then be incorporated into courses and clinical experiences beginning in the fall 2011 semester.

In her opening speech, Hoffart told workshop participants: “At LAU, I believe it’s important for us as faculty to develop trust and good communication, which is already evident among our 11-member IPE Work Group,” which consists of faculty members from the schools of Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Arts and Sciences.

“We’d like to extend this out to more LAU faculty. We are proud that the IPE program forms part of LAU’s new five-year strategic plan, to be launched in October 2011,” Hoffart added.

Leading an icebreaker during the retreat, Dr. Mona Haidar, who teaches at LAU’s School of Medicine and is a member of the IPE Work Group, asked faculty and other participants to write down facts about themselves and compare them with those of their colleagues.

The activity was a way to introduce the mission of IPE and highlight similarities among the health care professions for LAU students and faculty.

“We want to expose IPE to the rest of LAU’s health care faculty, so that more can join us in this initiative,” said Haidar. “We can work together, implementing learning activities with our students in hospital, community and classroom settings.”

Guest speakers Patricia Bluteau and Dr. Ann Jackson addressed the workshop participants via videoconference from the UK. They described their experiences with interprofessional education at the University of Warwick, and engaged participants in a Q&A session.

The workshop also addressed modes of delivering IPE, along with other challenges and constraints.

“One challenge might be that the five disciplines have different content to cover, with different time frames to complete them in,” said Hoffart. “We are taking small steps now, while seeking further guidance from Jackson and Bluteau.”

The retreat included a collaborative activity led by Dr. Anna Farra, faculty member at LAU’s School of Medicine and a member of the IPE Work Group. Faculty and attendees were divided into several groups to discuss various terms used by different groups of health and social care professionals. This enabled participants to identify faculty from other health care fields with similar academic interests.

The retreat ended with a tour of the new LAU clinical laboratories housing cutting-edge equipment and “patient-mannequins,” all in a hospital-like setting designed for clinical training.

“Implementing interprofessional education will be a hallmark experience for students and faculty in LAU’s health care programs,” Hoffart concluded. “We hope to become a leader in IPE, and a role model to other institutions within the region.”
 

The study, titled “Assessment of the Prevalence of Mental Health Disorders Among Adults,” was jointly conducted by LAU and Medécins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and was based on interviews with 748 adults from 283 households that took place between June and November 2010.

“There is reason for concern when we have a population facing risk factors associated with poverty, war and displacement, which place individuals at increased vulnerability for developing mental disorders,” said Dr. Augusto Llosa, the study's principal investigator.

He identified those risk factors as insecurity, hopelessness, poor physical health, rapid social change, and limited opportunity.

Among the mental health disorders discovered among residents, the most common were mood disorders, afflicting 21 percent, followed by anxiety disorders (13 percent) and psychosis (3 percent).

The study also revealed that 96 percent of those afflicted had not sought treatment, despite medical and mental health services available at the camp by MSF.

Dr. Samar Zebian, assistant professor of psychology at LAU who served as a research consultant for the project, attributed the treatment gap to a two-fold lack of awareness.

“Sixty-one percent of the participants in this study felt they didn’t have a problem, and 64 percent believed there weren’t services to help them,” Zebian said. “Those who recognized they had problems weren’t aware of the help available to them.”

In his opening remarks, Dr. Abdallah Abdallah, the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon, thanked MSF for its services to Palestinians in Lebanon and Palestine.

He cited previous studies revealing widespread poverty among Palestinians in Lebanon, noting that Palestinians face employment barriers in the country.

“Our residents are not healthy, the economic situation is bad, and the overcrowding is terrible,” Abdallah said. “Many of our students are dropping out of school. They say, ‘If I finish and receive a degree, I’ll still be unable to work, so why should I waste my time?’ This is a major problem for our young generation.”
 

For the first time, the event was organized through the collaborative efforts of the Student Development and Enrollment Management division, the Department of Natural Sciences, and LAU’s Hospitality Club.

“It was a team effort,” says Dr. Ahmad Kabbani, chair of the Natural Sciences Department at LAU Beirut and the mastermind behind the collaboration.

The event even drew some graphic design students who helped their friends studying natural sciences develop their posters.

“We emphasized teamwork,” Kabbani adds. “It’s very important that students learn about the interdisciplinary aspect.”

Kabbani also notes that the event created an opportunity for interaction between students and their community, and allowed them to realize their potential to learn and engage outside the classroom.

A health booth was set up during the event, where Dr. Nancy Hoffart, dean of LAU's School of Nursing, measured students’ blood pressure. Biology, pre-medical and nutrition students helped measure the body mass index of their peers visiting the booth.

During the event, over 50 posters were displayed outdoors that hit on a variety of health-related topics, including nutrition, cancer prevention, and substance use. Students voted for their favorites.

Spotlight on cervical cancer, HIV and travel safety

On the first day of the event, three LAU faculty members gave health-awareness presentations.

The first presentation focused on cervical cancer and was led by Dr. Wissam Ghandour, a part-time faculty member in LAU’s School of Arts and Sciences who holds an M.D. in gynecology.

The causes of most types of cancers, Ghandour said, are unknown, despite the association of some habits, such as smoking, with the disease. But unlike other cancers, he revealed a direct link between the HPV virus and cervical cancer, and said that 99.9 percent of cervical cancer patients have HPV.

HPV is most commonly transmitted sexually. Mothers may also pass it on to their newborns.

Many people who are infected with HPV, Ghandour said, are unaware and may lead perfectly healthy lives, but are still in danger of transmitting it to others.

“If someone gets infected, there is a high chance that the virus can clear up on its own without any type of treatment if exposure happens only once,” Ghandour said. “But if there is continuous exposure to the infection by having repeated sexual exposure to a person with HPV, that may lead into a pre-cancerous stage.”

According to Ghandour, 80 percent of women in the United States will be exposed to the virus by the age of 50. The peak age for developing cervical cancer is between 35 and 55, he said.

“Every two minutes, a woman dies of cervical cancer somewhere in the world,” he said. “Here in the Middle East, it’s every hour.”

Later in the day, Dr. Mona Haidar, a specialist in social medicine at LAU’s School of Medicine, gave a lecture on the global HIV epidemic.

More than 97 percent of new HIV infections occur in underdeveloped countries, she said, adding that the groups most vulnerable to the virus are sex workers, drug users, and sexually active people.

Haidar dismissed common misconceptions that HIV is passed through shared utensils, shaking of hands, kissing, using public toilets and swimming pools, and through mosquito bites.

The final presentation on travel safety was conducted by Dr. Anna Farra, who teaches immunology and microbiology (with an emphasis in infectious diseases) at LAU’s School of Medicine.

Farra said the first things to consider when traveling are the vaccines that need to be administered, paying particular attention to any viruses that the destination country is known to have a high prevalence of.

Ideally, she said, travelers should prepare six months before a trip and visit their health care providers for a pre-travel evaluation informing the physicians of all planned activities.

“It kind of takes the spontaneity out of life,” Farra admitted.

She said it is important to keep in mind the travel season, as different viruses spring up according to weather patterns, climate and other seasonal changes.

She also cautioned students against food safety hazards. Do not drink tap water, make sure it is not used to make ice cubes, and also avoid raw meat because it can carry parasites, she said.

She added: “A good saying when it comes to food is ‘boil it, peel it, or forget it.’”
 

Building on a workshop organized for the physicians in October 2010, last week’s event was held in anticipation of the first clerkships of the medical school’s founding class expected to begin in early summer.

“The students are going to show up at our doorstep before you know it so we are relying on your input,” said Dr. Lynn Eckhert, interim dean of LAU’s School of Medicine, as she explained to the UMC–RH physicians the importance of designing a successful clerkship program.

Also known as clinical rotations, clerkships will allow LAU students to perform the duties of physicians in different departments and specializations at UMC–RH. Under the supervision of UMC–RH doctors, the students will perform medical examinations, treat patients, and assist physicians with their medical tasks.

All medical students will be required to complete clerkships during their third and fourth years.

A key goal of the workshop was to help the physicians understand and meet a set of “global competencies” such as skills in communication and care giving, as well as professional standards in ethics and teamwork to pass on to the students.

According to Dr. Connie Bowe, a senior consultant at PHMI and one of the workshop presenters, setting consistent, universal medical standards remains a critical step to ensuring quality.

“Consistency in medical education has been a global concern,” Bowe said. “So this is how we can guarantee the public that the students we are graduating are in fact safe practitioners and that we vouch for their capabilities.”
 

Students were introduced to key members of the university and learned about different services, before being guided on a campus tour.

“We want you to think of LAU as a place to learn rather than a place to teach. Everything here will be supporting you to learn,” Dr. Abdallah Sfeir, LAU provost, told the incoming M.D. students.

“You have everything put at your disposal. The only thing we require from you is passion, time and love for what you do,” he added.

During the campus tour, the students got to peek at the site of their new medical school building currently under construction. For the time being, the students will make use of the temporary facilities inside the Dorms A Building.

Student training will also take place at University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital, and other hospitals with which LAU has clinical affiliations.

The medical school, which opened its doors to its founding class of 25 students last year, has a stated mission to “educate and train a new physician, one superbly trained in the art and science of medicine and who believes deeply that a physician is, above all, a merciful healer.”

The students were reminded of this mission, as the ethical and moral responsibilities of physicians were emphasized at the orientation.

Elie Samia, director of the Guidance Office in Byblos, told the students that LAU is a center for “diplomacy, conflict resolution, intellectual yearning, and emotional development.”

“Experience has taught us that the best way to unleash the potential of our students is to give them responsibility and authority,” Samia said, who informed them of the different avenues they were free to take as they enter the university, but encouraging them to follow a path toward “creative excitement.”

The Summer School on “Biomedical Informatics: Foundations and Research Directions” covered computational techniques and information technologies used for medical diagnosis, clinical decision making, personalized medicine, molecular biology, and health care systems.

It was co-organized by LAU’s School of Arts and Sciences and the Software Institute, under the patronage of Dr. Mohammad Khalife, Lebanese Minister of Public Health.

“The aim of this course is to lead participants to transform and implement this new information they are learning [concerning biomedical informatics] in the health sector, and to motivate participants to conduct research in this field,” said Dr. Nashat Mansour, LAU computer science professor, who is the director of the Software Institute and assistant dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in Beirut, during the launching ceremony on July 5.

Mansour added that one of the objectives of this summer school is to establish a network of researchers, from a number of universities, who will address challenging problems in biomedical informatics.

The course sessions were led by four world-class experts in the field: Dr. Bruce Bray, professor of biomedical informatics from University of Utah’s School of Medicine; Dr. Thomas Payne, medical director of IT Services at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine; Dr. Peter Tonellato, director of the Laboratory for Personalized Medicine at the Center for Biomedical Informatics of the Harvard Medical School; and Dr. Sami Khuri, computer science professor at San José State University.

The course attracted 45 participants, 35 from Lebanon and 10 from other countries in the region.

During the opening ceremony, LAU President Dr. Joseph Jabbra called on participants to “stay ahead of the curve” by “thinking outside the box.”

“The 21st century belongs not only to educated people, but to innovators as well,” Jabbra said. “All of us need to think outside the box … and this class is an attempt to do that.”

Minister Khalife also addressed the course participants during the opening ceremony, where he talked about recent and ongoing efforts inside the ministry to stay up-to-speed with information technologies.

“We cannot manage a health department without having an information system,” he said, adding that the ministry has incorporated a developed statistical system, but that includes some limitations.

Khalife also mentioned that the ministry was recently awarded the E-Government Web Award for its innovative website by The Arab Administrative Development Organization, which is affiliated with the League of Arab States.

The summer school at LAU was co-sponsored by the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research, Philips Middle East, the Arab Computer Society, and Software Design.

Zalloua will be working with a research team from LAU in collaboration with Dr. Hatem El Shanti, director of the Shafallah Medical Genetics Center in Qatar, over the grant’s three-year duration with an ultimate goal of preventing the spread of the disease in the region.

“Type II Diabetes is very rampant in this part of the world, and the main reason for that is because we’ve changed drastically our lifestyles over the last 50 years making it very difficult for our genes to adapt,” Zalloua says.

The two main lifestyle changes that are responsible for the disease’s spread, Zalloua explains, are the sudden decrease in exercise, and the shift in diets, which used to be rich in vegetables and low in fats and carbohydrates. A third, less significant, cause is the increase in stress.

“In the past, we used to walk to the market and to work, we had a lot less cars than we do today, so people were a lot more mobile, and our genes were adapted to the fact that there was not a lot of food available,” Zalloua says.

“And now all of a sudden, we have a lot of food stored in our bodies and we’re not walking anymore, we’re not exercising. We’re spending 24 hours a day either sleeping or on a chair behind a screen,” he adds.

Identifying susceptibility genes for Type II Diabetes will allow doctors to target individuals predisposed to the disease and deliver a clear message: avoid certain triggers such as having bad eating habits, and not exercising, or else you’re going to get diabetes.

“Those genes are not necessarily bad, but they are adapted to a certain environment,” Zalloua says. “We have to mimic that environment again, and the way to do that is fairly simple: exercise.”

Zalloua believes he was awarded the grant because of his proposal’s unique, hands-on approach to the problem.

The research team will visit villages throughout the region and meet with couples that have been living together for decades and that lead similar lifestyles, in order to find a correlation between their genes, habits, and the disease.

Zalloua says the Middle East is conducive to carrying out their research because of an aging population that has been living together for a much longer time than people from other regions of the world.

“This is something we can do, but nobody else can, because of our easy access to these people who live in rural areas,” he adds.

In an email last month announcing that Zalloua had received the grant, Dr. Kamal Badr, founding dean of LAU’s School of Medicine, noted that the research topic is in line with the school’s mission to foster “regionally relevant translational research.”

“Type II Diabetes is one of the most fast-spreading and devastating diseases affecting the populations of Lebanon, Qatar, and the entire Gulf region. Its prevalence is expected to reach nearly 50 percent in some of the Gulf countries over the next decade,” Badr wrote.

He added: “Coupled to his [Zalloua’s] existing grant on cardiovascular disease awarded by the European Commission, the grant [for the study of Type II Diabetes] will constitute a firm basis for the basic science component of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease Center, which the School of Medicine is establishing at LAU and its affiliated clinical training sites, principally the University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital and the clinical research consortium being developed through the LAU Institute for Human Genetics (headed by Dr. Zalloua) at Rafic Hariri University Hospital, Clemenceau Medical Center, and other medical centers and hospitals in Lebanon.”

“I am not surprised that you landed this important grant from the Qatar National Research Fund. Hard and smart work always pays off. Dedication to one’s research and scholarship will always be noticed and always rewarded, no matter what the challenges are,” wrote LAU President Dr. Joseph Jabbra, in an email message to the LAU community.

Jabbra added: “I am sure you will, with your Qatari collaborators, bring this important project to successful completion for the benefit of our entire region.”

Established in 2006, QNRF’s stated mission is to provide support to researchers within academia and throughout public and private partnerships.

Reflecting a rapidly growing global interest in social medicine, both publicly and socially, LAU’s Gilbert and Rose Marie Chagoury School of Medicine has integrated its study as a key part of the curriculum.

“Our vision is to produce a new kind of physician — one who is well-rounded and trained to treat the patient and not the disease,” says Dr. Mona Haidar, a faculty member from the School of Medicine. She adds: “And to do that, you need to understand the context in which the patient lives. Social medicine is essential to producing this new kind of physician.”

Another major objective of social medicine is to nurture the environment in which an understanding of the affecting socio-economic factors can allow society to improve public health.

Last month, Haidar gave a presentation entitled “Social Medicine and Global Health: Do They Really Matter?” at the University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital.

In her talk, she introduced the basics of the field of social medicine. “I presented an overview of its history and its three main themes which are: Social determinants of health; social meanings of diseases; and social approaches to disease,” she says.
“Physicians also have social responsibilities and they can be agents of change in their societies — they have both the responsibility and ability.”

“I tried to make the case that social medicine does matter if you want to provide good care or the best care to your community, and I presented cases for that,” Haidar explains.

In March, 25 LAU medical students, along with School of Medicine faculty members and LAU staff, got to know their local community better when they visited the Ministry of Public Health’s Byblos District Health Center, the Lebanese Red Cross, the Ministry of Social Affairs’ Center and local historical sites in Byblos.

The visit was organized by Haidar, as part of the school’s social medicine curriculum.

After the visit, Haider said that the school hoped it enabled students to understand what constitutes a community and what factors, elements and stakeholders shape community heath.

The visit was organized by SOM faculty member Dr. Mona Haidar as part of the school’s social medicine curriculum — which emphasizes that social, economic and political forces influence the occurrence and course of most diseases.

“We hope this visit will allow the students to understand what constitutes a community and what factors, elements and stakeholders shape community heath,” says Haidar. She adds that the visit also established contact between the LAU medical school and key people in the field in Byblos.

At the Ministry of Public Health’s Byblos District Health Center, director Dr. Shawki El Helou emphasized the importance of a multisectoral approach to health. He informed students about the Lebanese health system, focusing on the Ministry of Public Health with its various components and roles, such as providing surveillance for infectious diseases, offering primary health care services, and raising health awareness.

Student Wael Salameh says the information was “very insightful in terms of medical obstacles that exist in Lebanese society.”

“It’s always important to keep in perspective how much doctors have more of a [socially] responsible role toward people, not just a medical role, building on the fact that people view doctors as a source of trust and affiliation with them,” Salameh says.

At the Red Cross center, students enjoyed learning about how each of its divisions work. Some of the students have already volunteered at the Red Cross.

Director Suzanne Oueiss, as well as other staff, answered questions about the functions of the blood bank, emergency phone service, and other services provided by the center. Many of the students requested applications to volunteer.

Dima Jehe, a medical student who studied in Washington, D.C. before coming to LAU, says: “I think [the Red Cross] is a good liaison for us because it’s very close to our medical school and is very easy to work with.” She adds: “They have a volunteer section and a first-aid section — we can volunteer in both.”

The students also met with director Dolly Shami of the Ministry of Social Affairs for the area, which helps families deal with poverty and abuse, in addition to teaching women basic reading, computer and labor skills.

The community visit ended with a tour of the ancient ruins of Byblos with tour guide Yazid Mahfouz explaining various artifacts at the museum, and telling stories of ancient and modern Byblos.

Organized by LAU’s Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine, the half-day meeting, titled “New Medical Schools in Lebanon and the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities,” was opened by Dr. Kamal Badr, the school’s founding dean, who reflected on his decision and motivations to join LAU in building the new school.

“How do we define a good physician considering what has happened to medicine over the past 30 years since I joined medical school,” Badr asked the audience. He reflected that topics of conversation among physicians have shifted from medical procedures — during his early career — to dealing with health care providers and other for-profit groups that have blurred the objectives of doctors.

“This is a result of the invasion of the profession of medicine by several profit-making entities,” he said.

The timing of the event corresponds with a current global demand for health care that has led to a wave of new medical schools across the world. Lebanon alone has seen three new medical schools established in the past decade.

The deans recognized that the growing demand for health care also presents an opportunity to reshape the future of medicine by training doctors with a special emphasis on core issues and values.

“We chose to focus our mission on the things that make a physician driven more by his or her compassion and merciful approach to the patient,” Badr explained, “rather than just [being] involved in a business transaction between the patient and the insurance company.”

A host of other challenges facing medical schools during this period of expansion were neatly laid out during a series of presentations, such as accreditation and recognition, funding, language of instruction vs. language of practice, facilities, and quality of faculty.

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. George Thibault, president of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation — a leading academic and grant-awarding foundation in the United States — and a member of LAU’s Board of Trustees. He began his presentation by examining medical schools in the United States through a historical timeline, beginning over a century ago when they were met with practically no standards or oversight, to the challenges that face the newest ones opening up today.

“I think the list of challenges [in the United States], is similar to the ones of new schools being developed in the Middle East and elsewhere,” Thibault said.

Dr. Javaid Sheikh, dean of the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, gave a presentation detailing the steps taken to build the school since opening its doors to students in 2002.

“Unlike Lebanon which has over 150 years of very distinguished history of higher education including medical education, in Qatar, until very recently, there was only Qatar University,” Sheikh said in order to highlight a critical difference concerning precedence between the two countries in the establishment of medical programs.

The final presentation was given by Dr. Robert Crone, chairman of the governing board of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, who spoke on the globalization of health care over the past 15 years.

Crone, who is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates in the United States, and managing director of the Global Healthcare Practice at Huron Consulting Group, revealed that the growing demand for health care is largely a result of emerging economies and population growth in much of the developing world such as China, India, the Middle East, Russia, and Latin America.

People in developing countries “are demanding high-quality health care closer to home — they don’t want to leave their own community to get world-class health care,” Crone said. “This has really driven the growth of quality health care infrastructure in many places in the world [including] here in the [Middle East] region.”

During a panel discussion comprised of the group of 10 deans following the presentations, Dr. Kamal Kallab, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik, a traditionally French-medium university, identified the language of instruction as the most serious obstacle for his students who are graduating in a world that increasingly demands English.

“What we choose to do when accepting students is give them a test to make sure they are at the highest level in English and in French,” explained Kallab, noting that the school now requires students to take courses in both languages.

Dr. Camille Nassar, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Balamand University, also highlighted the problem of emigration. He said, “We are not able to keep our students here, and getting them back is another problem.”

“This isn’t the first time we get together and discuss the challenges that we are facing as medical schools in Lebanon, yet unfortunately,” Nassar continued, “I think most of the recommendations that were passed in the past did not materialize. I hope we can do something about it in the future.”

Multidisciplinary approach to health care education

Prior to this event, Dr. Thibault and a team from Harvard Medical International — which is in close collaboration with LAU’s School of Medicine — met with the deans of LAU’s schools of Nursing, Pharmacy and Medicine, along with top-level officers and faculty in each school, to discuss best practices and approaches to multidisciplinary teaching methods and optimization of the use of resources at LAU.

The meeting concluded with the formation of a task force including members from the three schools that will work together on identifying courses that can be common to the three schools.

This will further enhance LAU’s role as the only university in Lebanon that hosts three heath care-related schools under the same roof and encourages multidisciplinary techniques, teamwork, and a holistic approach to health care education and practice.

During the lecture, titled “Personal Genome for All,” Murray offered several examples of how scanning and analyzing a human’s personal genome — an increasingly common practice in medicine — can benefit individuals with treatable conditions.

“Individual or personal genome has great utility in targeting the proper drugs and doses to individuals,” Murray said. “And it has the ability to identify high-risk populations who can benefit from targeted screening.”

Murray explained that the personal genome is also helping to create a transition from population medicine, a historical practice of giving patients standard treatments and doses for a particular disease, toward a more individualized approach allowing doctors to prescribe treatments and doses based on a patient’s genetic makeup.

“We can use this concept of the genome approach to give us insights into the idea of personalized medicine ... and use that as a motivating force for people to have sequential screening done for diseases that they are at higher risk for, and for people to undergo lifestyle changes if the diseases are amenable to lifestyle changes,” he said.

“In five minutes, you’re all going to know more about me than my mother,” Murray added, as he revealed the results of his own personal genome, which accurately predicted a number of conditions.

But besides the genome, Murray said that other factors — environment, stress, diet, etc. — still play a significant role in determining health.

Therefore, he added, the genome cannot be solely relied upon to predict with complete accuracy the onset of a symptom or disease, or to guarantee that an individual will never get a disease that the results of an individual’s genome scan found to be low-risk.

The event was organized by LAU’s new School of Medicine, which has ties to the University of Iowa.

“We have been developing a very good relationship with the University of Iowa,” said Dr. Kamal Badr, founding dean of LAU’s medical school. According to Badr, the University of Iowa has supported LAU’s anatomy and histology programs.

With the help of Murray, LAU was also able to initiate a summer research program at the University of Iowa. Two LAU medical students took advantage of that program as it was launched last year.

The three-day conference was organized by the Arab Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antimicrobials, a member of the International Society of Chemotherapy, and was held in collaboration with the World Health Organization under the patronage of the Lebanese Ministry of Health. It kicked off November 6 at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, before moving to LAU where it was hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences in Byblos.

“Through this conference, we aim to serve the community by stressing the importance of the prudent use of antibiotics against pathogenic bacteria because of the increased resistance of these microorganisms to commonly used antibiotics,” said Dr. Fuad Hashwa, dean of LAU’s School of Arts and Sciences in Byblos, during the opening session at LAU.

The conference included 76 sessions examining patterns, trends and specific cases of bacterial infections.

Several researchers from LAU participated in the conference including Dr. Tarek Na'was, LAU Dean of Students in Beirut and an associate professor of microbiology, who was a member of the conference organizing committee and presented a research paper about characterization and antimicrobial resistance of the Haemophilus spp. bacteria.

Two other LAU participants were Dr. Sima Tokajian, LAU assistant professor of molecular microbiology, who presented her research on some molecular typing methods, and Dr. Roy Khalaf, assistant professor specialized in yeast genetics, who lectured on the characterization of a cell wall protein in the Candida albicans fungus.

Maya Farah, senior science lab technician in Byblos and LAU graduate with an M.S. in molecular biology, helped organize the LAU sessions with other LAU faculty, staff and students from the molecular biology graduate program. She says the core problems that have helped cause the growth of resistance in certain types of bacteria and led to the need for such a conference have been doctors who do not prescribe proper antibiotics and patients who stop using antibiotics prematurely.

“When a patient with a bacterial infection doesn’t complete the full dosage of the prescribed antibiotic, those bacteria will most likely develop resistance to that drug — a phenomenon that bacteria are capable of transmitting among themselves hence causing the failure of subsequent similar treatments,” Farah explains.

Other hot topics discussed at the conference included the H1N1 pandemic and recent advances in communicable diseases.

The conference concluded with some remarks by Dr. Asem Shehabi, ArAPUA vice president, who emphasized the importance of institutions to collaborate on research. He announced that his organization would secure funds for joint research projects with enticing proposals.

The Arab Conference for Antimicrobial Agents is held in a different location each year. It was hosted in Morocco last year and in Jordan in 2007.

Badr’s election was announced in October, by the ASL president, Dr. Edgar Choueiri, who is a professor and director of the Engineering Physics Program at Princeton University.

Choueiri explained that Badr’s election was based on his research accomplishments and his status as a leading scientist. He said that Badr’s “intellectual vigor, wisdom, dedication and efficacy will be a great capital for the academy [ASL] to draw upon as it goes forward in its mission.”

In addition to his role at LAU, Badr is an adjunct professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. He joined LAU in December 2006, from the American University of Beirut, where he served as a professor and chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine for over six years.

In a message to the LAU community, LAU President Joseph G. Jabbra expressed great pride in Badr’s election, saying that it brought “honor and recognition not only upon himself, but also upon the LAU School of Medicine which he leads — and upon our beloved university.”

After news of his election, Badr issued a humble statement, discussing his work and thanking the community for its support. He said, “Since my return to Lebanon to chair the Department of Internal Medicine at AUB and then to serve as founding dean of our new School of Medicine at LAU, I have been drawn away from investigative medicine and have focused almost exclusively on teaching, academic medical administration, program and department building, and, now, participating in the creation of a new medical school.”

He added: “To be recognized for my most modest contributions in science at this juncture comes as an unexpected reward and a humbling and moving experience, for which I am most grateful. It gives me much needed encouragement to continue to pursue the goal of creating, in Lebanon, institutions where high-caliber research can be pursued.”

Earlier this year, leading space scientist, Dr. Charles Elachi — who was recently appointed chair of LAU’s Board of Trustees — was also elected a member of ASL.

Upon his appointment in March 2009, ASL commended his work, stating: “Dr. Elachi is one of the most distinguished space scientists in the world today, and one of NASA’s most successful leaders of the past two decades having led NASA–JPL, since 2001, during its most successful period of Mars exploration and spectacular robotic missions to asteroids, comets and the outer planets.”
 

The Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine, named after the couple who donated $10 million to finance the construction of the school's complex, has been conceived with the help of Harvard Medical International, an academic health care delivery organization with which LAU has signed a 10-year agreement to help provide resources and professional expertise.

The entering M.D. students, all of whom are Lebanese with the exception of one young woman from California, took part in a daylong orientation at LAU's Byblos campus on August 31, one day prior to the beginning of classes, and were introduced to some of the school's faculty and staff.

Dr. Kamel Badr, the school's founding dean, congratulated the first batch of students while praising the medical program's cutting-edge curriculum. He said that even visiting HMI delegates were amazed by the integrated program and "the degree to which it is advanced in terms of the methodology."

"But as much as we have done for the program, we know that we need a lot of help and feedback from you," Badr told the students during the orientation. "We are creating this medical school together," he added. "You are the firstborns, and the firstborns are always given special attention and special privileges."

The medical school's building remains under construction in Byblos and is scheduled to open in 2010. For the next two years, the students will attend classes and use labs in a building adjacent to the construction site.

According to Badr, most of the students' hands-on training will take place in the Rizk Hospital, which was recently purchased by LAU and renamed University Medical Center-Rizk Hospital.

The students will also have the opportunity to practice at the Clemenceau Medical Center and Rafik Hariri University Hospital, which have forged agreements with LAU to allow students access to use their clinical facilities.

Drs. Lynn Eckhert and Kamal Badr give opening speeches at the evaluation and assessment workshop.

What attracted HMI to LAU?
Eckhert: I think LAU is a special institution that really knows what it wants to accomplish. It has decided it wants high quality and excellence in education so it's been very rewarding and quite easy to work with LAU because we share a value system.
 
Aretz: I think LAU has a track record and is really an established institution. It put several new programs and facilities in place. We thought everything was absolutely right.

Bowe: The School of Medicine seems very organized too. It has moved these projects along in a really orderly way. Since we do this in other places, we can appreciate that efficiency.
 
Eckhert: I had the advantage of interviewing some of the students. There was an enthusiasm among them that was pretty shocking for a brand new school. We are looking not only for a class that is bright, capable and excited but also a group that would work well together.

Dr. Eckhert welcomes SOM representatives to the faculty development workshop.

Can you describe HMI's relationship with LAU's School of Medicine
Aretz: I think it is more sort of a partnership, a relationship based on co-development and advising. We are not coming to establish our own institution. We are not managing anything. We really feel that we are here along the way to see this happen. We don't view ourselves as straight consultants either.
 
Eckhert: I think we feel a part of this initiative. It's happening in Lebanon and LAU but we are talking to the faculty all the time, visiting them, and being involved at whatever level the school likes.

Bowe: With our collective experience we can see some of the pitfalls and problems that are going to arise beforehand. We won't solve the problems but will alert and help the School of Medicine think through how it can prevent those things from occurring or at least be ready for them when they do happen. The start-up phase is the easy phase compared to the maintenance. It is the setting of a system in place that's going to keep the quality of education with enthusiasm, which is equally as important. 

Dr. Thomas Aretz talks about the integration of design modules into the SOM curriculum.

Have you seen the School of Medicine make progress in the past year?
Aretz: Oh, absolutely. The progress is going almost exponentially at this point.

Bowe: It's been amazing. I think Dr. Badr is a phenomenal administrator and he has a vision that is very clear. There is a physical progress in building, but there is also a sort of enthusiasm that is energizing everybody to give a lot of time and thought to create a curriculum that's exciting and innovative. It should be something very different from existing Lebanese medical education. 

Where do you see SOM in the future?
Eckhert: I think SOM will be one of the leaders in the Middle East. It is not only going to make a difference for its own students but also for medical education across the region. It is going to be innovative, thoughtful, patient-centered, student-focused.

Aretz: Given that LAU is going to introduce a nursing program and it has already an established pharmacy program, I think SOM will probably be one of the few schools in the world that may actually start educating students from various disciplines together, building health care teams from day one. I see this as a real possibility of creating some new regional and global models of medical curriculum.

Eckhert: SOM started right away by recruiting really good researchers. They will be a real leader in that arena, adding to the body of knowledge of medicine through research.


What advice can you offer to the first class, which will begin M.D. coursework in September 2009?
Bowe: I think I'd ask them to appreciate that learning is a process not an event. Sometimes it's only in retrospect that you can appreciate the progress you made.
Compared to students of other medical schools, they will have a different experience that we all believe will, in the long run, make them better doctors.

Aretz: Enjoy that you are the first class. Take ownership of your school. Work with the faculty to make it the best program you can possibly make. Take advantage of the fact that you are a small, very closely knit group. Your class is going to be a pioneer group who can really, quite frankly, create something absolutely brand new. So you should take advantage of that rather than expecting to be taught. Enjoy that you are learning.

"Although our research was not related to cancer, I was able to develop as a researcher and broaden my horizons," Abbas wrote.

Abbas "was doing way above and beyond what was required of him," Houri said. Impressed by his student's devotion to work and skills as an "independent worker," Houri helped him to apply to graduate programs, including The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which Abbas calls his "dream school."

Abbas was accepted at M.D. Anderson. Getting to the U.S., however, proved to be full of obstacles as the July 2006 war erupted, and Abbas and his family fled their home in southern Beirut, which was under constant bombardment.

To get the visa, he risked his life to go back to his home to retrieve papers. He also traveled--in vain--an unsafe road to Syria (where he was told the processing of his visa application had been transferred). He finally got the visa a day before his extended school admission deadline.

At his new university, he's been studying the role of a gene called p53, which regulates hematopoietic stem cells that are responsible for the replenishment of the blood. "More than 50% of cancers alter the p53 gene or pathways," Abbas explained, adding that an increased understanding of this gene may be "an avenue to shed light on its importance in leukemia initiation."

His persistence and hard work were rewarded on February 5 with the 2008–2009 Floyd Haar, M.D., Endowed Memorial Research Award.

Abbas hasn't decided yet on his plans after he graduates. Going to a medical school, or working in the U.S. or Lebanon, are among his options. Houri said he'd "love to have him as a colleague because his work is of such high caliber."

Abbas is sure he wants to return to his homeland one day, and help build Toufoula's "Dream Center," envisioned as a facility that will provide treatment and entertainment to cancer patients, and promote research.
 

Around 200 benefactors, LAU community members, and other prominent figures watched on big screens as President Joseph G. Jabbra, Ambassador and Mrs. Chagoury, Minister of Public Health Mohammad Khalife, and Founding Dean Kamal Badr proceeded to the school's construction site, shovels in hand, to lay the cornerstone containing contemporary documents and photographs.

Unique in the Middle East, the $18 million complex is envisioned as a technologically advanced 12,500-square-meter structure built in line with the school's innovative character and forward-looking curriculum.

The program is being developed in collaboration with Harvard Medical International, to offer students an American-style medical education. At the same time, the school is expected to enhance world-class basic, clinical, and translational research targeting regional health needs through clinical affiliations with the Clemenceau Medical Center and Rafik Hariri University Hospital.

In his speech, Dean Badr said that the School of Medicine would have its emphasis on patients, not diseases. It is "being conceived and designed to create a new physician, one who is superbly trained in the skills of 21st-century medicine, but who believes deeply that a physician is, above all, a merciful healer," he said.

LAUMS is the seventh licensed medical school in Lebanon. It is to be completed by 2010, and is named in honor of businessman and philanthropist Gilbert Chagoury--St. Lucia's Ambassador, Permanent Delegate to UNESCO and Ambassador to the Holy See--and his wife Rose-Marie. They pledged $10 million to fund the medical school, and an additional $3.5 million for the construction of the Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing, named after Chagoury's mother.

"I am proud to be associated with the establishment of one of the finest schools of medicine to be found anywhere," said Ambassador Chagoury, who is also an LAU trustee.

Badr--an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine who left his position as professor and chairman of the AUB Department of Internal Medicine in 2006 to take on his current role--said the school would house "clinical and research centers of excellence ... to address the most urgent health needs of the Lebanese family," including women's health; adolescent, pediatric, and geriatric medicine; as well as genetics, neuroscience, and psychiatry.

The school will be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, including a skill assessment center; a mock-up lab; a surgical procedure simulation room; video streaming, videoconferencing, and multidisciplinary laboratories; an electronic library; and a 24/7 cyber café.

Pre-medical students have been enrolling in the program since 2006, and the first class will be admitted in fall 2009.

The affiliation will "provide LAU with an excellent facility for the training of its students, residents, and fellows," said Dr. Kamal Badr, the school's dean. It will allow students to gain experience in inpatient and outpatient treatment and observe directly a variety of medical and surgical cases, from the outset of their medical education.

LAU faculty will cooperate with the hospital's physicians to train medical students and post-graduate residents and fellows. The school will also administer a laboratory for human genetics research within the overall lab structure of the hospital, and it will run the clinical research center that exists at the hospital, but needs an academic institution to operate it with high quality standards, Dr. Badr said.

According to Dr. Badr, RHUH is the largest public hospital in Lebanon. It was built in Jnah, Beirut, in the late 1990s and started its operations in 2003. Dr. Badr says it was "equipped with all that is needed to provide the best medical care to its patients," and LAU feels privileged to establish this affiliation. He added that as a governmental institution, RHUH attracts patients from all over Lebanon, making it an ideal place for conducting training and medical research programs, while at the same time serving the local population with high-quality care.

The signing ceremony gathered Minister of Public Health Mohammad Khalife, LAU President Joseph Jabbra, Vice President for Academic Affairs Abdallah Sfeir, Dean Badr, RHUH General Director Wassim Wazzan, and RHUH Chief Medical Officer Zouhair Tabbarah, at the hospital's premises.

This agreement complements the school's first clinical affiliation agreement, signed with the Clemenceau Medical Center, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins Medicine International, in July 2007. Plans for additional partnerships with medical institutions and centers are being studied.

On the first day, guest faculty Dr. Thomas Anders, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, presented a grand round on "Pediatric Sleep Disorders" at Clemenceau Medical Center.

The grand round was followed by a tour of CMC and a visit to other teaching and research facilities, which are leading candidates for affiliation with the LAU School of Medicine.

The next day, a one-day workshop on the "Implementation of Curriculum" was conducted by the HMI team, which included Dr. N. Lynn Eckhert, Director of Academic Programs, and Dr. Constance M. Bowe, Senior Consultant.

Around 20 newly recruited LAU medical faculty members attended the workshop coordinated by Dr. Zeinat Hijazi, Assistant Dean for Medical Education at LAU. The main topics addressed during the event, which took place on the Beirut campus, included: "Applications in Curriculum Design of the Kolb's Learning Style Inventory, " "Alignment of Learning and Assessment Objectives in Designing an Integrated Curriculum," and "Organizational Culture of a Medical School."

The workshop also featured a mock, problem-based learning class in which eight second-year pre-medical students participated. Another group of seven students from both campuses, together with faculty members, observed the exercise.

On the last day, the School of Medicine and HMI organized a half-day national workshop entitled "Medical Education: A New Vision" at CMC.

After the welcoming speech by CEO of CMC Mounes Kalaawi, LAU President Joseph Jabbra, and Dean of the School of Medicine Kamal F. Badr delivered opening speeches.

In her keynote address, Dr. Eckhert discussed the "New Trends in Medical Education and International Accreditation of Medical Schools." She then chaired a panel discussion, the objective of which was to launch a national dialogue on "Modernization and Harmonization of Medical Education in Lebanon."

The panelists included Dr. Georges Aftimos, President of the Lebanese Order of Physicians and high-level officers of six medical schools in Lebanon, namely Dr. Negib Geahchan representing Dean Fernand Dagher (Université Saint-Joseph) and Deans Kamal Badr (LAU), Philippe Chedid (Lebanese University), Nadim Cortas (AUB), Kamal Kallab (Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik), and Camille Nassar (University of Balamand).

The discussions focused on how the rich diversity of medical educational traditions in Lebanon can transform it into the dominant provider of human resources in medical education and training in the Middle East, thus meeting the growing needs of the region.

Next, Dr. Hijazi presented an overview of the LAU medical curriculum, followed by the last speech, entitled "Managing Institutional Resistance That Arises When Breaking With 'Tradition,' " delivered by Dr. Bowe.

The School of Medicine started its operations with the appointment of Founding Dean Badr in December 2006, after which curriculum design and faculty recruitment started. Construction of the medical school building in Byblos began in early 2008. Currently, more than 76 premedical students are enrolled in the undergraduate program, and in September 2009 the first class of students will be admitted.