Fall 2010 - Eastern Virginia Medical School

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Dr. Jones marks a century ofexcellenceIt would be more than cliché to say Howard Jones,MD, co-founder of the Howard and GeorgeannaJones Institute for Reproductive Medicine atEVMS, has achieved a great deal in his long life. Butit doesn’t hurt to say it again.Dr. Jones is approaching his 100th birthday onDecember 30 and is being honored this fall witha lifetime achievement award from the NationalInfertility Association, known as RESOLVE.“No one is more deserving to receive this award thanDr. Howard Jones,” Barbara Collura, RESOLVE’sexecutive director, says. “Like RESOLVE’s founder,he is a pioneer who has helped so many people buildtheir families. But he has also served as a leader,mentor, trail-blazer, and so many other titles in his60-plus years in the field of reproductive medicine.”Amidst all the fanfare, Dr. Jones remains humbleand practical.“As I approach my 100th birthday, my chiefconcern is whether I’ll make it,” he says. “AlthoughI feel generally well, I am familiar with statistics.Nevertheless, I must plan.”Dr. Jones and his wife, Georgeanna Jones, MD,brought international attention to EVMS and theDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1981for their role in the birth of Elizabeth Carr Comeau,the first child conceived in the United States throughin vitro fertilization (IVF). Working side by side,Drs. Jones established the nation’s first IVF clinic andDr. Jones and EVMS President Harry T. Lester share a laugh during the Sept. 21 celebration to mark Dr. Jones’ 100th birthday. Atthe event, the Howard and Georgeanna Jones Foundation for Reproductive Medicine and the EVMS Department of Obstetrics andGynecology announced the establishment of an endowed lectureship in honor of Dr. Jones and his wife.continued to push the frontiers in assisted reproductivemedicine for many years. Dr. Georgeanna Jones diedin 2005.Dr. Howard Jones has seen a great deal of history— and has been a part of it, too.A Baltimore native, he attended Johns HopkinsUniversity. He worked in gynecology at JohnsHopkins Hospital and completed a residency ingeneral surgery at Church Home and Hospital inBaltimore.His surgical skills were put to the test on UtahBeach during the D-Day invasion of Normandy in1944. After the war, he returned to Johns HopkinsUniversity and became the go-to surgeon for genitalabnormalities and reconstructions.As for next year, Dr. Jones said he is looking forwardto ongoing endeavors. Even as a centenarian,he’s busy with research and completing a project forwhich he’s well suited — a comprehensive history ofreproductive medicine.View photos from Dr. Jones’ birthday celebration atwww.evms.edu/magazine.HRSA lauds new approach to caring for HIV-positive patientsAn innovative patient-safety program at EVMSis changing the way outpatient clinics deliver careto indigent, HIV-positive patients — and it haswon four national awards in the process.Since its formation in 2008, the EVMS PatientSafety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborativehas created a successful interdisciplinary treatmentmodel at a rural clinic in Gloucester County.Clinical pharmacy services now are co-located inthe outpatient setting, turning pharmacists intotrue clinical partners rather than simply medicationdispensers. That has lowered the risk of adversedrug effects and increased patient compliance.The treatment team also includes a nurseeducator who tests patients’ literacy — part ofregular consultations on disease management— and peer educators, or HIV-positive patientstrained to counsel other patients on the challengesand benefits of living successfully with HIV.“With these additional sets of hands, brainsand eyes, we are providing consistent oversight oncare that many patients were lacking before,” saidRichard Hall, a collaborative member and counselorwith the Virginia Department of Health (VDH).The collaborative is a partnership betweenEVMS’ AIDS Resource Center and the VDH,with guidance from the federal Health Resourcesand Services Administration (HRSA).Last fall, HRSA recognized the collaborativewith several merit awards of excellence: for provenimprovements in health outcomes, for bringing ina pharmacist on site and for implementing “lifesaving”interventions. The team also received afourth award for winning the other three.Read the program guidebook online atwww.evms.edu/magazine.6 FALL 2010 www.evms.edunews
EVMS professoruncovers hidden trendof sad dadsIn 2004, while working on a large nationalstudy of factors influencing parenting behavior,James F. Paulson, PhD, associate professor ofpediatrics and child psychologist at EasternVirginia Medical School, stumbled upon aninteresting and little-known phenomenon —postpartum depression in dads.“We were interested in depression in mothers,as that was a known factor of parentingproblems. We just so happened to have ameasure of depression in dads, so we decidedto include it just to better understand the wholepicture,” Dr. Paulson says. “What we found andhave confirmed through a number of studiesis that expecting and new fathers experiencedepression at rates that are disproportionate tothe general population.”Dr. Paulson and his research team thenstarted examining all of the research availableon the topic and found that one out of every10 fathers experiences depression sometimebetween the start of pregnancy through oneyear after birth. This is more than doublethe 4.8 percent of men in the general publicexperiencing depression. The lowest rates ofdepression (7.7 percent) occur in the first threemonths postpartum, and the highest rates (25.6percent) occur in the 3- to 6-month postpartumperiod.The findings of the study were published inthe May 19 issue of the Journal of the AmericanMedical Association. In the article, Dr. Paulsonand co-author Sharnail Bazemore, MS, aresearch associate in pediatrics, examine theJames F. Paulson, PhDprevalence of prenatal and postnatal depressionin fathers, its impact on child development andhow it correlates with depression in mothers.“We’ve seen that they are actually quitestrongly correlated,” Dr. Paulson says. “Whenmoms are depressed, dads are more likely tobe depressed, or vice versa. We don’t know yetwhich direction the effect goes.”Dr. Paulson and his team also have beenstudying how depression impacts parentingbehaviors. He says depressed fathers interactless with their children, which can hamper thechild’s development. There are also studies thatshow behavior problems in young children withdepressed dads. But Dr. Paulson says furtherresearch needs to be done.“There isn’t a lot of research going on,” hesays. “The cool thing about this is it’s a smallfield of researchers, and EVMS is one of the fewplaces in the world that’s involved in this kindof work, at this level.”His team recently received a $420,000research grant from the National Instituteof Child Health and Human Developmentto fund a two-year study of Hampton Roadsresidents, examining depression in both parents,from the beginning of the third trimesterthrough six months postpartum.“In terms of understanding child outcomes,it makes mores sense to look at how the familyfunctions as a whole rather than looking atindividuals,” he says. “Looking at depression indads really opens the door to understanding thisas a family phenomenon.”Research identifiespossible newway to easeinsomniaA study by Daniel A. Bluestein, MD, professorof family and community medicine at EasternVirginia Medical School, and colleaguesat the Old Dominion University School ofNursing showsa link betweeninsomnia andpatients whodon’t b elievethey can changetheir behaviorsto improve sleep.I n s o m n i ahas long beenassociated withDaniel A. Bluestein, MDdepression, butthere has beenlittle research linking insomnia and one’s lack of“self-efficacy” — the belief and confidence thatone can improve his or her own health throughone’s own actions. In this study, funded by agrant from the American Academy of FamilyPhysicians Foundation and published in theJournal of the American Board of Family Medicine,low self-efficacy for achieving sleep-improvingbehaviors was an even stronger predictor ofinsomnia severity than levels of depression. Thesefindings illuminate a potential new method fortreating the condition.“Clinicians caring for insomnia patients knowto look for depression,” Dr. Bluestein says. “Theassociation with self-efficacy, however, is lesswell-known and suggests the need for researchinto whether boosting a patient’s self-efficacy canease his or her insomnia symptoms.”This research would evaluate strategies forincreasing self-efficacy such as peer learning,group discussions and what is known asmotivational interviewing — helping someoneweigh the pros and cons of taking or not takinga certain course of action.newswww.evms.edu FALL 2010 7
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Fall 2010 - Eastern Virginia Medical School

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