Momentum is building
"There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination and wonder.” —Ronald Reagan
If you had the opportunity to take a stroll across any of our campuses today, you might overhear conversations that pivot on words such as “growth,” “excitement” and “momentum.” What is so rewarding for us here at UT Health San Antonio is that these words ring true.
We are among the top-ranked institutions in Texas for aging research funding from the National Institute on Aging. We are ranked in the top 4 percent worldwide of organizations that receive National Institutes of Health funding. Our university leads the world’s largest research group focused on combat PTSD and other related conditions.
In our clinical mission, UT Health Physicians comprises the largest medical practice in Central and South Texas, supporting 1.6 million patient visits each year through 800 providers in more than 100 specialties and subspecialties. Birthplace of the Palmaz stent that came to be hailed as one of the “10 Patents that Changed the World,” ours is a multifaceted academic health center with proven strength in translating research breakthroughs into clinical trials and, eventually, into therapies and treatments for patients.
Like other academic health centers across the country, UT Health San Antonio trains the physicians, nurses, dentists, other health care professionals and scientists of tomorrow. Having missions of education, research and patient care is perhaps what best defines an academic health center. But our climb to the summit does not stop there. Without our fourth mission—to serve and engage the community—there would be no reason for our resolute commitment to growth.
As the chief catalyst of San Antonio’s $40.2 billion biosciences and health care industry, we share our excitement for the future as we collaborate with multiple public and private organizations across the community, including The University of Texas at San Antonio, Southwest Research Institute, Texas Biomedical Research Institute and Bexar County Hospital District.
A glimpse of our momentum is seen in the new facility we’re building for one of the world’s premiere aging research institutes, the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies. Concurrently, our new Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases is poised to step onto an international stage in its truly comprehensive approach to battling these horrible diseases.
With our missions serving as our motivation, inspiration and direction for everything we do, we also know that growth and success will come to fruition only as the result of each of us working together.
Thank you for all you do to support this amazing journey.
William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP
President and Professor of Medicine
UT Health San Antonio
Tomorrow, long before sunrise, we will begin again
For the United States, 1968 was a year of moments, high and low, that changed the world. The triumphs of the first 747 jumbo jet and of the first manned space mission to orbit the moon were tragically darkened by the assassinations of two visionaries, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
In San Antonio, the year witnessed the dedications of two of the community’s most far-reaching prizes, The University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio, now named the UT Health San Antonio Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, and the Bexar County Teaching Hospital, now called University Hospital. Today, as I think about the transformational events that have shaped our institution over the past 50 years, what has remained as a constant thread in this story has been the inspiring voice of promise and possibility.
It is the promise of this burgeoning, bustling-with-life, beacon-of-hope university that propels us forward and gives wings to all that we can imagine—to a future that could be.
It is the promise of this place that lifts burdens and relieves suffering. It is the promise of an always brighter tomorrow, despite frailty and the limitations of the human condition. A place of possibility, UT Health San Antonio has embraced learning and discovery, healing and serving, every single day since its dawning.
With this issue, we celebrate 50 years of dreams, toils and striving. Fifty years of promise that have given our community 35,800 graduates and the creation of the Palmaz stent, listed among the top 10 patents that changed the world. These five decades have resulted in today’s university community, comprised of a workforce of 6,627 faculty and staff, a student body of 3,270 and 915 residents and post-graduate trainees.
Ours is a mission that blends the forces of mind, heart and vision for one purpose: to find answers that will lead to hope and powerful new pathways to make lives better.
Yet even as we celebrate achievements, we can never be complacent, never be satisfied that we have done all we can to fulfill our role of instigator of promise. For tomorrow, long before sunrise, we will begin again. We will re-commit to moving forward, poised on the shoulders of all those who have preceded us over these 50 years—and all of you who support us through your passion and compassion, without fail.
As we continue to evolve, we thank you for your confidence and pride.
A promise we live by
Photo: Scott Ball, Rivard Report
Each of us has our own role to play, contributing through a prism of our personal assets to light our mutual paths. But what we all share in common—what binds us together—is the wish to serve others.
With the arrival of the new year, it seems fitting that we pause a moment to take stock of the challenges and opportunities brought our way in 2017. And, as we reflect upon the strivings and successes of our university, we realize that the story of our institution is always set within the backdrop of the triumphs and tragedies of the world around us.
In late August, when Hurricane Harvey hit our neighbors on the Texas Gulf Coast, members of the UT Health San Antonio community, from emergency medicine personnel to UT Police, were among the first to lend a hand in Houston. Soon after, our School of Nursing faculty and students began to travel twice a month to Rockport to afford its storm victims much-needed health care.
This autumn witnessed a series of terrible losses, including an unfathomable tragedy in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a quiet community just 21 miles east of our San Antonio campus. Again, members of our health science center extended hearts and hands as our trauma and emergency surgeons—joined by physician assistants, nurse practitioners and the full surgical critical-care teams of our partner, University Hospital—leaped into a hard-fought struggle to save innocent lives.
Our faculty, staff, students and residents, together with our partners, donors, alumni and advocates, work daily to bring the light of hope to thousands of lives across the world. From creating a 3-D-printed prosthetic hand to bring encouragement and added mobility to an 11-year-old, to providing dental care for the homeless at Haven for Hope, to investing generous funding from USAA in telehealth counseling for caregivers of military family members, each and every day we live our promise to serve others.
Shoulder to shoulder, with you, we stand together to lift up the world.
People. Passion. Promise.
People. Passion. Promise. Those three words are behind everything we do at UT Health San Antonio.
Our faculty, staff, students and residents contribute daily, without reservation, their multifaceted talents, exemplary minds and unrelenting commitment to expand and expedite the discovery of all that can be known in order to make lives better.
This effort affords us a unique platform from which to make a difference in the world. For ours is a kiln in which is forged myriad hopes for answers—hopes that are realized through our missions of education, research and patient care.
You can see reflections of the energies, perseverance and passions of our people in the advances we are making to recruit outstanding professors, scientists and physicians to complement the work of our exceptional faculty. You see it in the groundbreaking discoveries we make, every day, in everything from diabetes and pain management, to Alzheimer’s disease and regenerative dentistry, that have life-changing, life-saving implications. Finally, you see it in our students who work tirelessly so that they may one day embark on a lifetime dedicated to health care for all.
Certainly we cannot undertake these endeavors alone. We depend on other people who likewise hold in their hearts a passionate commitment to our missions. Two of these individuals are the extraordinarily generous philanthropists Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, whose legacy of giving to our university has reached $61 million. This issue of Mission features the story of their commitment to both our institution and the young people for whom financial access to professional education has been a challenge. Coming from humble backgrounds themselves, the Longs are true-life heroes who believe in investing in these students, from all across Texas, to enable them to go on to help the next generation, and the ones who will follow.
On Feb. 14, fittingly, we celebrated their commitment to our people, passion and promise when we named our School of Medicine the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine. On that day, scores of students and graduates, many the beneficiaries of full-paid scholarships sponsored by the Austin couple, joined in our thanks.
As is their custom, the couple was quick to give thanks of their own, and to remind us all that the work we do, the advancements we make, bear meaning that is felt beyond our university walls: “This is a community endeavor, and you are all going to be part of that community,” Mr. Long said on that sunny Valentine’s Day.
Our first three missions of education, research and patient care advance in tandem to accomplish the fourth mission, that of community service. I could not be prouder of the many ways in which our students, faculty, staff, residents, alumni and donors strengthen and serve all the communities, near and far, of which they are a part.
People. Passion. Promise. Together with you, the difference we make across the thousands of communities we touch shines bright with promise for a UT Healthier world for years to come.
We promise you
Each day, we work to fulfill a promise—a promise to educate tomorrow’s healers, to search for answers, to always work to make lives better.
We are transforming the world around us. We’re home to five preeminent schools, top-tier research institutes and a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center. Furthermore, we boast the largest multidisciplinary physician practice in the region.
Cohorts of highly qualified students compete for coveted places in our classes, graduate to superb positions around the country and then improve lives all over the world. Research progress is intensifying each day, with its impact felt near and far. Ours is an academic health center where an analysis of a single cell in the urine could obviate the need for radical surgery; where combination therapy cures hepatitis; where new pharmacologic cocktails could reduce the ravages of diabetes; and where targeted therapies can save people with the worst cancers.
The times have never been more exciting.
Since 1959, we have defined our strengths and our purpose through our achievements. Our continued successes and relentless passion fortify this strong foundation.
Today we build on that legacy. We are moving forward under a new, shorter name, UT Health San Antonio, to represent our expanding missions of teaching, discovery and healing.
Together with this new name is a new logo, an orange shield topped by the Alamo’s silhouette, designed to convey the prestigious nature of our university and reflect your trust in our commitment to health care. Inspired by our official seal, our new logo pays tribute to our history, honors our Texas roots and builds on the strong reputation of our institution.
This rebranding of our health science center is historic—and we expect the impact to be profound. Yet it doesn’t change who we are, or what we will achieve. We are healers, educators and scientists, united in purpose. Our promise remains unchanged: We champion health for all.
Since our inception, we have worked to deliver on that promise. We will never waver, even as we begin a new chapter full of limitless possibilities.
Uniting for a common purpose
We have a long, stellar tradition of uniting for a common purpose with our military medicine community.
Through this stalwart commitment of minds, talents and hearts, we are able to make better the lives of hundreds of thousands of our servicemen and servicewomen. These heroes then pay it forward—through their sacrifice, humility and fraternity—in order to ensure the freedoms and opportunities that sustain our nation.
From our internationally renowned PTSD research and treatment, to the expert training we afford medical personnel from all branches of the armed forces at the San Antonio Military Medical Center of Fort Sam Houston, to the compassionate care our faculty members deliver to our revered veterans at the Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital, our Health Science Center remains steadfast in its commitment to serving our military, their families and the military medicine community that has transformed San Antonio into Military City, U.S.A.
We know no truer honor or privilege than to keep whole, and help make more resilient, our veteran, active duty and retired military members—patriots all—as they ennoble our university’s mission through their lives of courageous service to country and humanity.
Please join us in celebrating our patriots, and the Health Science Center's world-class Military Health Institute, at the 2016 President's Gala—An Evening of Tribute, Sept. 24 at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio. The event will honor retired Maj. Gen. Joe Robles and his wife, Patty, for their service to the nation, our military community and USAA. Proceeds from the gala will establish an endowment for the Military Health Institute. Individual seats are $175 and table sponsorships start at $2,500. For more information, go to http://makelivesbetter.uthscsa.edu/gala.
We are fighting back.
Together, we are now on the offensive in the battle against Alzheimer’s disease.
Unrelenting and cruel, this disease robs so many of a most precious gift, our memories.
One in nine of us over age 65 will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Every one of us will be touched by this disorder in some way, whether by affected friends or family members.
We are determined to fight back against the specter of Alzheimer’s disease, and we are not alone in this quest. We are joined by scores of supporters who have given to this cause. In record time, less than two years, we have collected more than $41 million to create this region’s first Institute for Alzheimer and Neurodegenerative Diseases that will open this year (see story, Page 33).
This will be a comprehensive care center that will feature expert diagnostics, physicians who are at the top of their fields, support programs for the countless caregivers desperate for relief and hope, and access to clinical trials of new therapies.
It was nearly two years ago when Glenn Biggs, an iconic San Antonio business leader and close friend and mentor to all four presidents of the Health Science Center, came to me seeking guidance on where to go and what to do for his rapidly advancing condition. He was the one in nine.
We could not point him to a comprehensive care center in this region. Nor could we even assure him that interventions were available that could make a difference. That very day, we pledged to fight back.
We have kept our promise to Glenn, even though he is not alive today to see the work he inspired. We will create this new institute in honor of him and for the millions who have lost their memories, and their lives, to this illness.
William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP
President and Professor of Medicine
UT Health Science Center at San Antonio
There's a tsunami approaching
Every day, more than 1,000 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. These are our mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers and spouses. They are scientists, artists, teachers and policymakers.
As time goes on, even more of us will be affected, because the numbers are rising at a startling rate. Today, one in nine Americans aged 65 or older has the disease. In just one decade, the number of Alzheimer’s patients is expected to reach 7.1 million, a 40 percent increase from today. In our state, the numbers are expected to nearly double.
San Antonio is facing an especially worrisome scenario. Age is the greatest risk factor for the disease. There is a high number of retirees who make their homes in this city and the surrounding region. As a result, we will see higher incidences of Alzheimer’s than many other areas of the country. Compounding the problem is this: Hispanics are one and a half times more likely to have the disease and other forms of dementias. In South Texas, this statistic is significant since 60 percent of our population is Hispanic.
Doctors do what they can to manage the illness with therapies that are available, but there is no known cure for the disease, no way to prevent it, and its progression cannot be stopped or even significantly decreased.
As the region’s academic health science center, it is our duty to do everything we can to tackle and eventually annihilate this terrible disease. To that end, we are working to create South Texas’ first comprehensive institute for Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases. Through this endeavor, we envision offering all medical, dental, allied health and social services for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients and their families under one roof, and aligning these interdisciplinary health services with our basic and translational aging research programs. We will address the enormous challenges of Alzheimer’s from every pressure point—physical, emotional and financial.
We have a strong platform on which to build. The nationally recognized experts that make up our Health Science Center faculty have already made significant strides in age-related research, and we have a long tradition of excellence in neurological education and service to patients. You will see many of those accomplishments throughout this issue of Mission, including in our cover story.
We recognize that we do not accomplish these great feats alone. We are fortunate to have garnered the support of such impactful and dedicated friends as the J.M.R. Barker Foundation and The Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, as well as many other contributors who also feel compelled to help us in the fight against Alzheimer’s.
We have much more work to do, and so much more to offer those suffering from this disease. Together, we will persist, committed to discovering better therapies and providing superb care to all our patients.
William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP
President and Professor of Medicine
UT Health Science Center at San Antonio
We make lives better.
Those words are more than just our institutional tag line. They are the job description of everyone at our institution who, through transformational research, education, clinical care and community service, seeks to make a difference in the world.
The cover story of this Mission illustrates that and honors our faculty and what they bring to their jobs, from the occupational therapist who moonlights as a clown and occasionally taps into her bag of whimsical props to help make patients’ hands stronger, to the surgeon who burrows in fields of wildflowers to take photographs and embraces the beauty, silence and peace that may elude him in the operating room. He does this so that he can bring that same concentration to his job.
There is also the story of a brave group of Latina breast cancer survivors who, working through our Institute for Health Promotion Research, share their stories of courage and vitality so that cancer survivors everywhere can remember why they fight and, most importantly, that they don’t fight alone.
We highlight our School of Nursing researchers who are working steadfastly to address the critical issue of nursing shortages by ferreting out the root causes of nursing stress. Someday, thanks to their work, those stressors can be reduced, or even eliminated, and retention rates will rise.
You’ll also read about the remarkable work of ourCancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) faculty, as well as those donors who help make it possible, as we celebrate an important milestone—40 years of working to annihilate cancer.
We believe in doing whatever it takes to make lives better every day. And we recognize a critical fact: We don’t do it alone. It is through your help and your belief in our commitment to the health of the world that we continue onward toward our ultimate goal.
Thank you for supporting the Health Science Center and thank you for working with us to make those four simple, yet vital, words ring true.
William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP
President and Professor of Medicine
UT Health Science Center at San Antonio
We did it
A decade ago we undertook the mission of raising millions of dollars to support the exceptional work we do here, from research and education to patient care and community service.
We did not just meet our goal, we surpassed it. We made history. The importance of the work we do here is vital: changing lives, saving lives, educating new generations of health care professionals. We offer hope, enlightenment and futures. Our community knows this. You know it. That is why we were able to eclipse our goal, not by a few hundred dollars, but by $100 million.
Saying thank you is not sufficient. What we can do is promise you that your support will be reciprocated through our unwavering commitment to our patients, our students, our community and to scientific advancement. You have entrusted us with this support and you have our pledge to work tirelessly to achieve success in each of our missions.
This issue of Mission illustrates our promise of excellence to you. There is the story of Gerald Pineda, featured on the cover with his son, Jackson, who knew even before his son was born that Jackson would someday need a kidney transplant. His future was uncertain, but one thing wasn’t: Gerald would do whatever was needed to keep his son alive. Days before his son’s 10th birthday, Gerald was wheeled into an operating room where doctors took one of his kidneys and transplanted it into his son. Today, Jackson is a teenager and leads a healthy and normal life.
Our doctors who practice at the University Transplant Center, just one example of our partnership with University Hospital, made the Pineda family’s story a success story. But it certainly is not the only one. The University Transplant Center holds a 100 percent survival rate for pediatric kidney transplants.
Then there is Lt. Col. Alan Peterson, Ph.D., who uses his own experiences serving in battlegrounds overseas to lead his quest to find a cure, not simply a treatment, for post-traumatic stress disorder.
We make lives better, every day, and this impact extends across the globe. Thanks to members from our Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics, communities in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are fighting to stop the outbreak of diseases such as cholera through education about sanitation, hygiene and water purification. We also have researchers who travel around the world seeking treatments and cures for the most deadly of diseases.
These are just a few of the stories we have to tell at the Health Science Center. They exemplify the promise we made at the founding of this university 55 years ago. And by relating those stories, we are also saying "thank you" for believing in and supporting the Health Science Center and our mission.
We will continue on this path of excellence that you have supported. We won’t let you down.
We did it, we met our goal. And our work continues.
Sincerely,
William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP
President
Professor of Medicine
UT Health Science Center at San Antonio