UNMC for the record

UNMC held Spring Spirit Day on its Omaha campus April 1. More than 500 students, faculty and staff stopped by for root beer floats, popcorn and candy. Spirit Day events also will be held at other UNMC campuses in the coming weeks. The fun events show appreciation for all UNMC employees, faculty, and staff. For a photo album from the Omaha event, click here.

Ira Combs

Ira Combs, community liaison nurse coordinator for the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at UNMC’s College of Public Health, has been selected as a recipient of the 2014 African American Leadership Award by the Urban League of Nebraska. Combs is being honored in the health category for his tireless work in the north Omaha community. Last year Combs received the White House “Champion of Change Award” and the Martin Luther King Award from Life Care Center of Omaha for his work in health prevention and education.
The awards ceremony will be held Friday, June 6, at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Omaha.

Cynthia Sutton, an administrator in the division of cardiology, department of internal medicine, has been elected a member-at-large to the Administrators of Internal Medicine (AIM), the national organization of business administrators in departments of internal medicine at medical schools and affiliated teaching hospitals in the United States and Canada.

Michael Dixon, Ph.D., president and CEO of UNeMed Corporation, is scheduled to testify on behalf of the University of Nebraska before a congressional committee next week in Washington D.C. Dr. Dixon, who oversees intellectual property commercialization efforts for research developed at UNMC, was invited to provide testimony to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade by U.S. Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, the subcommittee chairman. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, April 8, at 10 a.m. Additional information, including video coverage, will be available through the committee website. C-Span coverage of the hearing has not yet been determined.

UNMC Family Medicine editing team — Paul Paulman, M.D., Audrey Paulman, M.D., Nate Falk, M.D., Jeff Harrison, M.D., Kimberly Jarzynka, M.D., and Laeth Nasir, M.D., formerly of UNMC and now the chair of family medicine at Creighton – has had another book published, a Spanish-language edition of its latest work, “Taylor’s Differential Diagnosis Manual,” which was released in English in 2013. The book, the 13th for the team, is available through Amazon.com. With this publication, the UNMC Family Medicine editing team has now been published in English, Mandarin, Turkish, Portuguese and Spanish.

Li-Wu Chen, Ph.D.

Li-Wu Chen, Ph.D., professor and chair, health services research & administration, College of Public Health, was appointed this week to serve on the Health Care Database Advisory Committee. He was appointed by Bruce Ramge, director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance, for his experience in health care data and cost efficiency research. The committee will make recommendations regarding the creation and implementation of the Nebraska Health Care Database, which will provide a tool for objective analysis of health care cost and quality. It is intended to promote transparency for health care consumers and facilitate the reporting of health care and health quality data.