August 1, 2024

Dear School of Medicine Community,

I think we were all looking forward to the warm weather, and we have learned a valuable lesson: be careful what you wish for! As the hot summer months dwindle away, I am still hopeful that everyone is finding time for some fun and relaxation before the school year kicks off. Having said that, I know that many of us have been extremely busy these past few weeks, and there is a lot of updates I need to pass along.

Just last week, I announced the appointment of Professor Frank Henn, MD, as the new Chair of the Department of Orthopaedics. Dr. Henn has been doing an excellent job serving as Interim Chair since December of 2022 when Andrew Pollak, MD was appointed Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer of the University of Maryland Medical System. I am certain of Dr. Henn’s abilities, and I look forward to seeing him and the Department of Orthopaedics flourish. Please join me in congratulating Frank on this well-deserved promotion.

There is other great news on the clinical front to share: our Department of Family & Community Medicine has been named a Tier 1 institution placing it among the top 15 medical schools for primary care training in the nation in the recently released 2024 US News & World Report rankings. For research, we were named a Tier 2 medical school placing us in the top quartile of medical schools. Read more here about our rankings and the new four-tier ranking structure established this year by US News & World Report.

The Department of Family & Community Medicine is on a roll: it was just voted Baltimore’s Best General Practitioner in The Baltimore Sun's 2024 Readers' Choice Poll! Led by David Stewart, MD, Associate Professor and Chair, UM Family and Community Medicine offers primary care, urgent care, and sports medicine for all ages, as well as walk-in/same-day health services for the University of Maryland, Baltimore's campus. Look for a communiqué late summer from Dr. Stewart announcing new providers. We also received with Honorable Mentions in Best Urgent Care, Best OB/GYN, and Best Pediatric Practice. Congratulations to our winners, and to our partner, the University of Maryland Medical Center, for being voted Best Hospital (Honorable Mention) as well. It is so gratifying to have an engaged partner like UMMC, and it is not surprising that our collaborative efforts are paying off.

This kind of engagement is paramount to our success, and lack of engagement within our institution was one of the main complaints I heard during my first two years as Dean. With this in mind, we made sure to fully engage our entire School of Medicine community when developing our Strategic Plan, GenMD-Solving the Generational Health Challenges of Our Time. That plan was launched in early April, and we are now moving into the implementation process of this five-year plan. We have assigned high-level SOM leaders as mission group leaders to track our progress, but the most important part of achieving our ambitious goals will come from you: our faculty, staff, and students. There are 51 objectives in our Strategic Plan; we are asking each member of our SOM community to choose a strategic objective to focus on in the coming year. You recently received a detailed email from me explaining specifically how you can engage in this process, please review this email and the FAQ again. As I have said, we are in the right place, at the right time, with the right people. 

Finally, if you are looking for even more engagement, and a great way to wrap up your summer, please consider joining me, and many members of the School of Medicine and the UMB community, on August 10th at a Block Party at the Mondawmin Mall. As most of you know, the University of Maryland Faculty Physicians has entered into an agreement to lease 17,000 square feet of space at The Village at Mondawmin, to establish a new community "health village”. It is part of a larger effort to work in partnership with our West Baltimore neighbors to develop and implement health care delivery based on neighborhood needs and to improve patient access to health care. The Block Party will have food, dance performances, health and wellness screenings and much more. The event runs from 11am to 4pm at the Mondawmin Mall, 2401 Liberty Heights Avenue, Baltimore, 21215.