Hospitals

Night Read (Ohio): Pediatricians help lead earthquake disaster response in Haiti

Case Western Reserve University faculty from the Center for Global Child Health and pediatricians at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital are helping to lead the pediatric disaster response to the Haiti earthquake.

By Mary Vanac on February 12, 2010 6:51 pm

News and notes from the day in MedCity, Ohio:

Case Western Reserve University faculty from the Center for Global Child Health and pediatricians at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital are helping to lead the pediatric disaster response to the Haiti earthquake. Dr. Ximena Valdes and Dr. Karen Olness, who is the founding director the global child health center, just returned from a week in Port-au-Prince where they participated in a clinical and psycho-social assessment, provided clinical care to children, and organized a continued presence of U.S. pediatricians to help Haitian pediatricians over the next six months, according to university spokeswoman Jessica Studeny.

A month after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti, a 32-member medical team organized by Glen Echo Presbyterian Church in Clintonville is traveling to Fort Liberte in northern Haiti to run a medical clinic for a week, something the group of medical missionaries has done each year since 2003, reported the Columbus Dispatch, which will follow the group’s progress here. Rev. Lee Platt said he doesn’t know what to expect this year.

HealthBridge, the Cincinnati-based regional health information exchange that connects hospitals and doctors offices, will receive a $9.7 million grant from the federal stimulus bill, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

University Hospitals has received a $1 million gift from Hoyt C. Murray and family in honor of his wife, Gail S. Murray, a nationally renowned audiologist whose professional service spans 25 years at UH Case Medical Center and UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, according to a hospital statement. The gift will help fund professional audiology education through a biennial symposium.

The Cleveland Clinic‘s Medicine Institute has received a $653,595 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to design antiretroviral strategies to prevent and treat HIV using mathematical and computational modeling, the Clinic said in a release. The research is aimed at reducing the global spread of HIV infection as well as HIV drug resistance, a frequent, serious consequence of antiretroviral use.

The Visiting Nurse Association of Ohio has expanded the senior leadership team that guides Northeast Ohio’s largest and oldest community health organization dedicated to in-home care, promoting Michelle B. Gillcrist to Chief Government Relations Officer and Sally Moennich to Chief of Clinical Partnerships, both newly-created positions, according to a release (pdf). Ralph E. Knull has been hired as director of Legal Affairs.

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Along with doctors and nurses at MetroHealth Medical Center, Cuyahoga County commissioners Tim Hagan and Peter Lawson Jones kicked off a campaign Friday to convince the county’s voters to keep a human services tax, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Services at MetroHealth, the county’s hospital, are supported by the tax.

Medpace Inc., the Cincinnati clinical research organization, has hired Dr. Samer E. Kaba as a medical director with therapeutic expertise in guiding global clinical trials in the area of neuroscience, according to a Marketwire release.