PCOM Digest 2012 No 1

2 0 1 2 No1

FEATURES

Tug of War ......................................................................................................8

Founders’ Day 2012 ......................................................................................14

Building Social and Emotional Competence in Preschool Children ............18

Pioneering Color in MRI Imaging ................................................................20

DEPARTMENTS

Updates ............................................................................................................2

Class Notes ....................................................................................................22

My Turn Essay ..............................................................................................28

conTEnTS

EDITORJENNIFER SCHAFFER LEONE, MA

CREATIVE DIRECTORWENDY W. ROMANO

GRAPHIC DESIGNER ABIGAIL HARMON

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSDANIEL F. BATTAFARANO, DO ’83JANICE FISHERDAVID HNIDA, DO ’80 MADELINE LAWPAMELA RUOFF, MSCAROL L. WEISL

NANCY WEST

FLORENCE D. ZELLER, MPA, CFRE

PHOTOGRAPHERSMICHELE CORBMANBRUCE FAIRFIELDABIGAIL HARMONJOHN SHETRON

Contact Us

PHONE

215-871-6300

FAX

215-871-6307

E-MAIL

[email protected]

MAIL

4180 City Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19131-1695

www.pcom.edu

Digest, the magazine for alumni and friends ofPhiladelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (Vol.73, No. 1, USPS, 413-060), is published three timesa year by the Departments of Marketing andCommunications and Alumni Relations andDevelopment. Periodical postage is paid at UpperDarby, PA, and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:DigestAlumni Relations and DevelopmentPhiladelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine4180 City AvenuePhiladelphia, PA 19131-1695

Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the College or the editors.

DIGEST2 0 1 2 N o 1

ON THE COVER: “Tug of War” presents avignette of a trauma chief, hiscorps and their tireless efforts tosave the lives of patients, bothfriend and foe—in the mostaustere of settings.

2 0 1 2 No1

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 1

message from the president

Dear Alumni and Friends:

Through the cover article of this issue of Digest Magazine,nationally acclaimed author David Hnida, DO ’80, has penned agift for his alma mater: a moving account of his experiences as atrauma chief at one of the busiest combat hospitals in Iraq. In thisforsaken desert outpost, Dr. Hnida and his team tended to thewounded as whole people—their acts the personification of theosteopathic philosophy.

In a companion “My Turn” essay, David F. Battafarano, DO ’83, offers “images of healing” from a chapel at Brooke ArmyMedical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Battafarano portraysgreat empathy for the fresh amputees seated in the pews—as wellas for those wounded Vietnam veterans who occupy the subcon-scious of his own boyhood memories.

Apropos to these military-focused stories, I am pleased toannounce that recently, PCOM—in conjunction with the American Association of Colleges of

Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) and the Association of AmericanMedical Colleges (AAMC)—made a commitment to the WhiteHouse Joining Forces initiative to meet the urgent healthcare needsof military service members and veterans and their families. Ourcommitment—supported by AACOM and the AAMC—is toensure that our students have the competencies they need to effectively deliver health care to these constituencies. These compe-tencies will impact our curricula in the years to come.

Annually, PCOM graduates between 8 and 9 percent of eachosteopathic medical class into the military. Among all graduates ofthe College’s academic programs, there are more than 650 militaryservice members, most of them active in practice/duty. Their serviceinspires pride and gratitude.

Other articles in this Digest issue directly tie into our teaching,research and service missions. Profiles of Founders’ Day honoreesKenneth J. Veit, DO ’76, MBA, FACOFP, dean, senior vice presi-

dent of academic affairs, and provost, and Robert Timothy Bryan (DO ’12) provide examples of those whocontinue to embody the dedication, loyalty and service that our founders exhibited.

The article “Building Social and Emotional Competence in Preschool Children” shares the work ofShannon Sweitzer, PhD, clinical assistant professor, psychology, and the evidence-based practices sheemploys to promote young children’s social and emotional competence and to address challenging behaviors.

Finally, the article “Pioneering Color in MRI Imaging” reveals the groundbreaking work of H. KeithBrown, PhD, professor, anatomy, Georgia Campus. Dr. Brown has patented the process of assigning color toa biophysical characteristic. This methodology can enhance perception of anatomical structures, making iteasier to visualize and quickly differentiate tissues by their color.

I thank you for your continued interest in and support of PCOM.

With warmest regards,

Matthew Schure, PhDPresident and Chief Executive Officer

I am pleased to announcethat recently, PCOMmade a commitment tothe White House JoiningForces initiative to meetthe urgent healthcareneeds of military servicemembers and veteransand their families.

“

”

P h i l a D e l P h i a C o l l e g e o f o s t e o P a t h i C M e D i C i n e2

Updates

2

Celebrating History and Diversity in Medicine

“You don’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.”With those words, Matthew Schure,PhD, president and chief executive officer, helped kick off PCOM’s celebration of Black History Month.Sponsored by the Student NationalMedical Association (SNMA), activitiesthroughout the month included a day ofcommunity service, soul food lunchesand movies. The celebration culminatedwith the SNMA awards banquet.This year’s Meta L. Christy Award was

presented to Judith A. Lightfoot, DO’92, an infectious disease specialist atGarden State Infectious DiseaseAssociates, P.A., Voorhees, New Jersey.Her particular focus on HIV/AIDS

education and healthcare disparities hasbeen a source of motivation and inspiration for PCOM students. The Meta L. Christy Award was

established in honor of PCOM’s firstminority graduate, Meta L. Christy, DO ’21, who is recognized by theAmerican Osteopathic Association as the first African American osteopathicphysician. This award is given in recogni-tion of exemplary practice of osteopathic medicine, service to the community andinspiration to future osteopathic physicians. Marsha Williams, associate director,

admissions, PCOM, was named SNMAMentor of the Year.

Meta L. Christy Award recipient Dr. Lightfoot (center), SNMA President Luther Quarles (DO ’14)

and Valerie Moore (DO ’14) at the SNMA banquet in March.

For the Love ofOMM

Third-year medical studentsRoss Behymer, Nicholas Freedmanand Gary Zane have been acceptedinto PCOM’s OMM fellowshipprogram. As fellows, they willattend PCOM for an additional12 months over a three-year period, serving in the College’sOMM department as bothinstructors and practitioners.Each fellow is committed to

employing the principles of OMMas well as the approaches of OMTin their practice of medicine,whether their specialty be family,rehabilitation or physical medicine.An annual College provision

sustains the fellowship programwith assistance from the C. PaulSnyder, DO ’10, and the Frieda O.Vickers, DO ’39, and Major James G. Vickers endowmentfunds. Additional support comesfrom special gifts earmarked for OMM.

New OMM fellows, from left, Nicholas

Freedman (DO ’15), Ross Behymer

(DO ’15) and Gary Zane (DO ’15).

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 3

Updates

Joanne Jones, executive director,PCOM MEDNet and administrativedirector of medical education, spent morethan a decade under the mentorship ofRichard Pascucci, DO ’75, professor ofinternal medicine and vice dean forosteopathic clinical education, creatingand maintaining graduate medical education opportunities in the Northeast.Now Ms. Jones has relocated to Georgiato continue to build residency programs in the South. “As the number ofGA–PCOM DO graduates increases,”she points out, “so does our need for residency spots.” To make this happen,Ms. Jones is building on the relationshipsthat H. William Craver III, DO ’87,dean and chief academic officer, osteopathic medical program, and PaulaGregory, DO, MBA, coordinator of clinical education and assistant professorof family medicine, have established witharea hospitals.“Creating residency programs is very

labor intensive for both the College andthe hospitals involved,” Ms. Jonesexplains. It’s also very expensive. The

hospital must hire additional staff,including a program director and adirector of medical education, and thenthe program must be approved by theAmerican Osteopathic Association.One success story is the Houston

Medical Center in Warner Robins,Georgia, which will begin training DOfamily medicine residents in July 2012,thanks in part to the Georgia Legislatureas well as the Georgia Board forPhysician Workforce, which has facilitat-ed a designation of funds to be used byGeorgia hospitals to defray costs in ini-tial years of residency creation. “Havinga residency program allows the hospitalto provide additional services to thecommunity, and by virtue of being ateaching hospital, it is viewed by thecommunity in a more positive light,”says Ms. Jones.Ms. Jones returns to Pennsylvania for

quarterly meetings and recruitmentdays. She also continues to work withDr. Pascucci to create and maintaingraduate medical education positions inthe Northeast.

AOA PresidentVisits GA–PCOM

GA–PCOM faculty, studentsand staff enjoyed a visit this pastJanuary by Martin Levine, DO,president of the AmericanOsteopathic Association. Dr.Levine noted the important rolethe College is playing in providingaccess to health care locally. “Ithink the osteopathic profession isthe answer to the needs of theAmerican public,” he noted. “I’dsay this school is doing a tremen-dous job in meeting those needs.”H. William Craver III, DO ’87,

professor of surgery, dean andchief academic officer, osteopathicprogram, agreed, saying, “Wecame here with a focus on Georgiaand the Southeast. Our goal ishelping this community.”

Developing Training Opportunities in the South

Dr. Levine

EdS students celebrate the anniversary

with faculty and alumni.

Honoring Ten Years – School Psychology

In February, school psychology atPCOM marked its ten-year anniversary.The milestone was celebrated with a recep-tion held in conjunction with the NationalAssociation of School Psychologists’ 2012annual convention, and was attended by a

large group of PCOM faculty, graduates,staff and students.In his remarks, Robert A. DiTomasso,

PhD, professor and chair, psychology,congratulated “our directors for theirvision, our faculty and staff for theiruntiring commitment, our administra-tion for their unending support, and,mostly, our students for placing theirtrust in us to facilitate their quest forprofessional development.”Within the past decade, school psy-

chology program offerings at PCOMhave increased from one to three, facultypositions have developed from one toseven and a half, and enrollment has con-sistently grown. Some 230 school psy-chology graduates serve on the front linesin schools nationwide.


Updates

Deborah A. Benvenger,MBA, has been appointedchief admissions officerwith oversight for admis-sions functions on both thePhiladelphia and Georgiacampuses. She has beenserving as interim chiefadmissions officer sinceMarch 2011 and, prior tothat post, as director ofadmissions since January 2005. Before joining the College, she served

as assistant director of admissions forIona College as well as the assistant deanof admissions for Quinnipiac UniversitySchool of Law. “This is an exciting and humbling

opportunity, as I know I follow in the

footsteps of a beloved individ-ual [Carol A. Fox, MM] fromwhom I learned so much duringthe past seven years,” says Ms.Benvenger. “The time I have spentat PCOM has been extremelyrewarding, as I have had the pleas-ure of interacting with so manyindividuals—students, faculty,advisors, alumni—both on and offcampus. I look forward to many

more years of being able to foster therelationships that make our school sovery special. The entire PCOMAdmissions team is committed to hardwork, loyalty and vision. You will continue to see the outcome of theirefforts as we move forward with new andexciting initiatives.”

Ms. Benvenger

Ken Slavik, PhD, professor of basic sci-ences and chief scienceofficer, is on a mission tolisten. As he steps intothis newly created posi-tion at PCOM, Dr.Slavik explains that hisfirst priority is to talkwith faculty researchersto assess where the Collegeis in terms of scientific research. After identifying the strengths ofPCOM’s research efforts, his goal is tobolster research processes and proceduresand to identify opportunities within theCollege and beyond. Dr. Slavik comes to PCOM from a

career immersed in both academic andindustry research. He earned his PhD in cardiovascular pharmacology at theUniversity of Houston, and completedtwo National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowships—one at theUniversity of Tennessee and another atBaylor College of Medicine. After

leaving academia, Dr. Slavik worked in industry in a variety ofcapacities, from clinical scientist tomedical director. Although he has an office at the

GA–PCOM campus, Dr. Slavikspends a good deal of time inPhiladelphia as well. “My positionisn’t defined by departments or campuses,” he explains. “I’m here toincrease collaboration, help develop

scientists, improve communication andbring people together across the board.”Dr. Slavik is also looking to increaseresearch partnerships and funding opportunities externally. Dr. Slavik is committed to fostering

student-faculty collaboration. “Scholarlyactivity makes people better teachers,” he emphasizes, “and students bring freshideas and a new perspective to researchthat can lead to some of the best questionsand solutions. When you bring bright,passionate people together, like we havehere at PCOM, anything is possible.”

Researching Opportunities

Georgia CampusAlumni Relationsand DevelopmentOfficer

Alisa Toney, MS, has joined theAlumni Relations and Developmentteam as the GA–PCOM develop-ment officer. The focus of her new role is to build communityand constituent relations and todevelop programs for GA–PCOMgraduates and all PCOM alumniin the region. Prior to her post at GA–PCOM,

Ms. Toney moved through pro-gressively responsible advancementroles including leadership giftsofficer at Spelman College andassistant director of developmentat Emory University. Ms. Toney holds a bachelor’s

degree in psychology from H.Sophie Newcomb MemorialCollege of Tulane University and a master’s degree in quantitativeresearch and measurement fromGeorgia State University.

Dr. Slavik

Ms.Toney with GA–PCOM executives

Admissions Officer Named

“Each one teach one” took on newmeaning as members of the PCOMalumni board donated an evening tomixing and mingling with PCOM stu-dents. A tradition following Founders’

Day celebrations, the Student andAlumni Networking Night presents anopportunity for students to talk toPCOM alumni in a casual setting andlearn from their experiences.“I want to give back to the College,

and talking to students at NetworkingNight is a great opportunity to do that,”says Luke G. Nelligan, DO ’91, alumniassociation president. “I’ve walked in theirshoes; I’ve experienced some of the sametrials and tribulations. I had great mentors,and this is one way I can honor them.”Matt Stensland (DO ’13), was at the

event “to pick some brains.” “I’m stillundecided about a specialty,” he admits.“Talking with docs in my areas of interestwill help me narrow down my choices.”

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 5

Updates

Meeting and Greeting Across Generations

Mr. Stensland with Dr. Nelligan

Making DreamsCome True

PCOM’s Robert BergerPediatrics Society sponsored the7th annual Date Auction, whichraises funds for the Make-A-WishFoundation. Faculty and studentsperformed in this part talent show/part auction to spur the bidding.Fabulous raffle prizes added to thefun and funds. The event raisedmore than $6,000 to help send 10-year-old Cameron and her family to Disney World.

Raffle drawings raise funds for the

Make-A-Wish Foundation.

They Walked the Talk

“I don’t ever want to have to give the diagnosis of cancer.” That was one reasonCate Fusco (DO ’15) gave for co-chairing Relay for Life, the 18-hour fundraisingwalk for the American Cancer Society. More than 200 individuals—students, facultymembers and community supporters formed 17 teams. Teams raised over $22,500 during this March event; fundraising will continue through August 2012.“Whether we’ve been touched by cancer or not, we want to do whatever we can to

help,” says co-chair Adrian Pearson (DO ’15). From Friday night through Saturdaymorning at least one individual from each team crab walked, did the macarena,hokey-pokied or just simply moved around the Alumni Gymnasium.Entertainment, food and fun kept everyone’s spirits and energy levels high. In

addition to raising funds for cancer research and supportive services to patients andcaregivers, Relay for Life brought the entire PCOM community together. “I wantedto run an event that would involve the whole College,” explains Ms. Fusco, commu-nity service director of the DO Council.

The first lap was made by survivors and caregivers.


Anyone who’s familiar withPhiladelphia knows that building-sizemurals are an important part of the land-scape. The murals tell stories of triumphsand tears, of lives well lived and of livescut short. In her role as board presidentof the Philadelphia Chapter of theAmerican Foundation for SuicidePrevention, Terri Erbacher, PhD, clinicalassistant professor, school psychology, ishelping to tell the story of suicide.Working collaboratively with thePhiladelphia Mural Arts Program and thePhiladelphia Department of BehavioralHealth and Intellectual disAbilityServices, Dr. Erbacher is the clinical advisor for the design of the mural“Finding the Light Within.”The mural was designed with input

from a wide range of community members including survivors, attempters,and their families and friends. Dr.Erbacher and poet/artist Theodore Harrisfacilitated writing and collage-makingworkshops at Horizon House, a commu-nity resource for adults with psychiatricor developmental disabilities, drug andalcohol addictions, and/or homelessness,which helped start a dialogue among survivors and attempters of suicide andhelped inform the mural design.

Updates

The mural is extremely personal; mostof those who have worked on it havebeen touched by suicide. Surroundingthe central figure of the mural are imagesof those who have died by suicide. Oneof those images is of Dr. Erbacher’sfather. “My mom helped paint part ofmy dad’s face. The activity was a bigbreakthrough for her,” she notes. Dr.Erbacher is also depicted in the mural.“All the people who worked on the muralwere models,” she explains.The mural is part of a larger suicide

awareness initiative. Dr. Erbacher is alsoworking with First Person Arts inPhiladelphia on storytelling workshopsfor people whose lives have been changedby suicide. “We hope to educate the public about

warning signs of suicidal behavior andhow to seek help for loved ones beforethere is a loss of life,” she confirms. The40- by 60-foot mural will hang on thebuilding housing Horizon House at 120South 30th Street.

The mural “Finding the Light

Within” was painted by people

touched by suicide.

“Murals tellstories oftriumphsand tears,of liveswell livedand of livescut short.”

Life-saving Art

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 7

deVeLopment neWs

J. Steven Blake, DO ’89, MSc, a member of the PCOM Board ofTrustees, has pledged $1 million to establish The J. Steven Blake, DO ’89Scholars Society at PCOM. Dr. Blake, asteadfast supporter of PCOM, will fulfillhis pledge within ten years. Dr. Blake’spledge is the largest single scholarshipassurance for PCOM to date.Initial Blake scholars will be of African

American descent. The honor will be fulltuition for four years. Candidates mustmeet established criteria in order to beconsidered for and selected to receive thisscholarship.Dr. Blake is the president/chief execu-

tive officer of Blake GastroenterologyAssociates, LLC, and president/chief exec-utive officer and medical director of theMt. Airy Ambulatory Endoscopy SurgeryCenter. He has served as a member of thePCOM Board of Trustees since August2007, and serves the College as assistantclinical professor, department of medi-cine; lecturer, gastroenterology; and mem-ber, leadership gifts committee. Amember of the 1899 Society, Dr. Blake isalso a committed donor to the PCOMAlumni Association. Each year he honorsstudents at both campuses who partici-pate in the Student National MedicalAssociation by giving them each $500Life Membership status in the PCOMAlumni Association.

Digest #2, 2012, will include a story about Dr. Blake and his most generous gift.

Alumni Association Gives$100,000 for Clinical Learningand Assessment Center At its January 2012 meeting, the

Board of Directors of the AlumniAssociation voted unanimously to con-tribute $100,000 to the College to helpsupport the $2.6 million project ofredesigning and rebuilding the ClinicalLearning and Assessment Center. Inrecognition of their gift, the College isnaming the reception area in honor ofthe association. Richard Pascucci, DO ’75, outgoing

association president, and Dana C.Shaffer, DO ’85, treasurer, have notedthat this commitment serves as a lead giftfor the new center. The College hopes toraise half of the needed funds in gifts andpledges over the next three years. The10,000-square-foot facility, located inRowland Hall, will house new standard-ized patient examination rooms, confer-ence areas, classrooms and several newrobotic simulation suites including a sur-gery OR, an ICU, and an ER treatmentand simulation complex.

Trustee Commits to Goal of Full Scholarship

A Memorial Gift, Two Funds,Countless BenefactorsThe wife of the late Daniel J. Smith,

DO ’73, Teresa Doyle Smith, has beenan ardent and generous contributor toThe Fund for PCOM since Dr. Smith’sdeath in 2002. Continuing her husband’slegacy of support, she made an extraordi-nary $100,000 pledge in April 2011 toendow two new funds through ThePCOM Foundation.The Daniel J. Smith, DO ’73 Memorial

Scholarship Fund and The Daniel J.Smith, DO ’73 & Teresa Doyle SmithEmergency Medicine/Family MedicineDiscretionary Fund were first reported ayear ago as anonymous gifts. Mrs. Smithagreed to announce the gift to encouragesimilar support for the College.The Daniel J. Smith, DO ’73

Memorial Scholarship Fund is nowendowed and will assist osteopathic med-ical students on the Philadelphia campuswho are residents of or who attended anundergraduate college in New England.This fund will benefit from the TrusteeScholarship Challenge whereby recipientswill receive a supplemental grant equal tofive percent of the initial corpus—in thiscase an additional $2,500 to the availableearned income of The Daniel J. Smith,DO ’73 Memorial Scholarship Fund. The second endowment of $50,000

will provide discretionary funds for thedepartments of Emergency Medicineand Family Medicine. Every other year,the respective department chairs willhave additional resources that may beexpended in a manner that supports theteaching, research and public servicemissions of the College. The Daniel J.Smith, DO ’73 & Teresa Doyle SmithEmergency Medicine/Family MedicineDiscretionary Fund recognizes Dr.Smith’s career in both family and emergency medicine.

Faculty and Friends of the College Bequeath EstatesReunion attendees will remember

William A. Rieber, DO ’41. Dr. Riebernever missed a PCOM Reunion; hepassed away in May 2011, just shy of his70th celebration. His $50,000 bequestwas left to the OMM Department.Ida C. Schmidt, DO ’35, passed away

in 2007, and her widower, longtimePCOM supporter David Williams, diedthis winter. The couple left PCOM theirhome and half of their IRA. The OMMDepartment, of which Dr. Schmidt wasa member until her death at age 96, isthe recipient of this generous gift—$77,000 to date.


EDITOR’S NOTE:

In 2004, at the age of 48, David Hnida, DO ’80, a family physician from Littleton,Colorado, volunteered to be deployed to Iraqand spent a tour of duty there as a battalionsurgeon with a combat unit. In 2007, hereturned as a trauma chief at one of the busiestCombat Support Hospitals during the Surge.

His acclaimed book, Paradise General(Simon & Schuster, April 2010—available for purchase through both amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com), offers an atypical look at medical care during the war. “Tug of War,” anoriginal piece written for Philadelphia Collegeof Osteopathic Medicine, presents a vignette of atrauma chief, his corps and their tireless effortsto save the lives of patients, both friend andfoe—in the most austere of settings.

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 9

worst, though, was the silent stretcher. The “quiet one” wasthe guy you worried about most. Quickly eyeballing thespeeding parade of wounded, I counted four men total,which should have added up to 16 limbs. Yet I could countonly nine and a half. A Humvee had struck a roadsidebomb, and in a millisecond, the lives of four youngAmericans changed forever.

I was running a trauma team north of Baghdad at the399th Combat Support Hospital, or “CSH,” during thesummer of 2007. In Army-speak, it’s pronounced“CASH,” which, yes, rhymes with “MASH”—the front-line Army hospitals made famous by Korea andHollywood. Except for the name, there was little differencebetween the two. In fact, watch a rerun of M*A*S*H onTV and you’ll get a picture-postcard view of our not-so-stellar medical center. In the middle of nowhere, we werenothing more than a series of tents connected to an

The first vibrations were subtle, faint quiverings deep inthe abdomen. I tried to ignore them, busy as I was with thetowers of paperwork that some clerk insisted needed signa-tures stat. But there was no escaping what was to come. Afew heartbeats later came a trembling that worsened myalready illegible physician penmanship and made writingimpossible. I flung the pen onto the floor as my teeth beganstriking each other like a chattering windup toy. It took afull 30 seconds to finally hear the sound: an angry chop-ping of blades through the steaming desert air. Medivacs.Not just one, but two, maybe even three. It was true; youalways felt them before you could hear them.

“Four urgents on litters!” shouted the lead medic.

I launched from my chair as the ER doors exploded with stretchers of the wounded. The symphony of soundchanged from a rhythmic thunder of landing choppers to a sickening cacophony of moans, sobs and screams. The

AN ACCOUNT BY A TRAUMA CHIEF IN A COMBAT HOSPITAL IN IRAQ

by David Hnida, DO ’80

10 P h i l a D e l P h i a C o l l e g e o f o s t e o P a t h i C M e D i C i n e

gowns and masks, you might never knowwho the actual surgeons were. There wereno clean booties or scrubs; we just woreour combat boots and uniform with thegown on top. And if we had to hustle intoa case, we still packed loaded pistols underour surgeon costumes. Simply put, theplace was a hellhole.

“Major Hnida, alpha bay first. We’regood with the rest.”

On this day, the medics had thewounded off the choppers and into thetrauma bays in less than a minute, andhad IV lines inserted and blood runningin less than two. It was now my turn toappraise the damage as I waited for thecavalry of my fellow physicians to arrive.The past week had been rough, with adaily dose of bombs planted along oneparticular stretch of highway.

I took a deep breath of courage andstepped towards the “quiet one.” Myassessment was fast, but methodical.Head to toe. I had to ignore the bloodystumps that minutes before had been

“In the middle of nowhere,we were nothing morethan a series of tents con-nected to an occasionalrundown building. Thehelipad with four con-crete landing zones wasjust 100 feet from theemergency room.”

well-muscled and athletic legs. It was stillhard not to stare and be stunned, buttightly cinched tourniquets meant themangled limbs wouldn’t cause death. A missed metal fragment in the middleof the back would. After securing an air-way and reciting my trauma “A-B-Cs,” I searched his wounded body millimeterby millimeter, seeking the micro-woundthat would mean a funeral instead of a family reunion. The room for error was zero.

The 399th wasn’t my first venture intothe wounds of war. At an age whenmany are retiring from the military, I joined. I was a 48-year-old lifelongcivilian when I raised my hand, took theoath, was granted the instant rank ofmajor, and shipped out to the middle ofIraq as a battalion surgeon.

That was early 2004, a time when thewar had begun to unravel. My welcometo Iraq came in the form of a bulletwhizzing by my head on the day Iarrived. I was then handed an M-16 andtold to shoot back. It was a deploymentwhere I was mortared, rocketed, evenclubbed by an insurgent. Yet that situa-tion wasn’t as terrifying as the one Ifound myself in now. Before, I sent thewounded to get fixed; now, in 2007, theysent them to me. And frankly, I didn’tknow what I was doing. In fact, my first day at the CSH a few

months earlier was a disastrous mix ofpanic and incompetence. When a baby-faced 19-year-old soldier came throughthe door in the very first minutes of myvery first shift running the ER, flightmedics were straddling his chest doingCPR. A bullet had gone straight throughone side of the kid’s neck and out theother. Other wounds had been weaklycovered with a patchwork of saturateddressings. I watched small geysers ofblood spurt from a variety of holes in per-fect rhythm with the chest compressions.

Twenty sets of eyes belonging to theER staff laser-locked right on me—thenew doctor—to see how I was going tosave the day. But they had no idea I’dnever treated anyone shot in the neck orwith a body riddled like a sieve. I froze. I couldn’t talk and couldn’t move. Themedics told me later it seemed like I wasjust calmly assessing the situation forabout 20 seconds, then going right to

occasional rundown building. The heli-pad with four concrete landing zoneswas just 100 feet from the emergencyroom, which meant we didn’t need Jeepsor buses to transport the wounded—justlarge-wheeled stretchers nicknamed“rickshaws,” which moved as fast as themedics could push them.

As the doctor in charge, mine was thefirst face, and sometimes the last, that thewounded would see after being wheeledinto the ER. Only 10 blood-stained pacesaway was the OR tent, which was enteredthrough an improvised door made from ablanket. The innards were even lessimpressive. Plastic scrub sinks let out amiserly trickle of water for the feebleattempt at clean hands and, except for the

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 11

work. Yet I don’t remember trying toclamp a mangled blood vessel or blindlysticking in a breathing tube. I do, how-ever, remember the soldier being wheeledinto the OR while I went outside andpuked. I wanted to run away and gohome, but knew I couldn’t.

A couple months and too manypatients later, my terror at the sight andresponsibility of caring for someone’syoung son or daughter lessened. My daysbecame more business-like, yet neverlacked frequent deluges of panic. It was apsychological horror show where everyday seemed like the first, doing things I’dnever done, seen or even imagined, letalone been trained for. But then again,where do you learn the stuff you need toknow in a war: pulling nails from a carbomb out of someone’s back, trying tokeep some guy’s intestines from spillingonto the floor as you struggle to examinehim, comforting young soldiers whowent hysterically blind or couldn’t stopstuttering after seeing their best friend’sguts splashed throughout the inside of aHumvee?

I was caught with my stethoscopedown; I’d been practicing for 22 yearsand had never seen anything close towhat I witnessed in Iraq. Hell, I was afamily doctor who had a good day whenI lowered someone’s high blood pressureor opened some snot-filled sinuses.

But the harsh reality was that the mili-tary needed warm bodies, and decidedseasoned doctors like me could get on-the-job training. After all, it was the so-called Surge of 2007, and the business ofwar was literally booming. My trainingconsisted of a four-day series ofPowerPoint lectures. Now I was a leadtrauma physician at a busy combat hospi-tal, confronting the fact that war is aclassroom with little mercy.

“Secure those tourniquets and add abelt to what’s left of the right leg.”

I finished with the “quiet man,” oddlythankful that his worst problem was a setof newly missing legs, and that the reasonfor his silence was an overly generousdose of morphine on the flight in. Islipped and skidded across bloody floorsas I moved from stretcher to stretcher,absorbing the calmly voiced evaluationsof the nurses and medics who realized Iwas outnumbered by wounded four toone. That ratio changed quickly as mycolleagues scurried from breakfast, show-ers and latrines when they heard the roarof arriving choppers. Now I could stepback and assume the role of traffic cop—listen to their assessments and recom-mendations and then make my decisions.“Make patient number one first in linefor the OR. X-ray patient number two.Follow him with number three. Then getpatient four a bedside ultrasound stat.”

My saviors were an interesting mix ofphysicians from across America: youngand old, conservative and liberal, blackand white. The only thing we had incommon was that we were all reservistswho had volunteered to spend 90 daysgetting the crap scared out of us. We allquickly learned that we were under-manned and outgunned. Our rotationwas originally slated for 15 doctors, butwe numbered only eight, which meantwe would work all the time and do anyand all types of work during that time.We knew we were screwed, and that oursurvival, and that of our patients, dictated that the word “ego” be ejectedfrom our vocabulary. None of this “I’msmarter than you” or “Why are youdumping this case on me?” doctor atti-tude that was contagious in the States.

We sutured together, surgerizedtogether, sphincter-pinched together, gotconfused over X-rays together, and mostimportantly, loved each other as family. Itwasn’t unusual after an assembly-line dayof cases to collapse on a bench outsidethe OR only to awaken hours later to ablanket over our sprawled bodies and awarm meal by our side.

“How are the blood pressures? Are weready to roll?”

It took a few hours, but we finally goteach of our four young soldiers stabilized

12 P h i l a D e l P h i a C o l l e g e o f o s t e o P a t h i C M e D i C i n e

I tried to picture them having fun, but allI could see was reality.

Sweat dripping into eyes. Nostrils flar-ing. Shallow, panting breaths. The medicsdidn’t look at who this guy really was—the enemy. They just knew he was apatient and did what they would do withany other patient.

I knew the insurgent was in bad shapeand circling the drain; a few gunshotwounds to the chest and gut put him intothe downward spiral of shock. We startedpumping blood into him as rapidly as wecould, and then called for the surgeons tohustle over from the barracks.

“Get me Rick and Bernard as fast asyou can.”

When they arrived, Drs. RickReutlinger and Bernard Harrison took aquick glance at the stretcher, and simplysaid, “Surgery. Now.”

Their next looks were to me, an oddsilent exchange. Here we were: Americandoctors dressed as American soldiers. Wewore uniforms, carried weapons and evensaluted when we had to. Now we faced thelitmus test of our oaths: Uncle Sam versusHippocrates. Tonight, as my friends broketheir gazes and strode towards the OR, itwas clear Hippocrates had won—as hadAmerican values. But there was no flagwaving, no rousing speeches, no Fourth ofJuly fireworks. We were all just doing whatwe had been trained to do.

It’s funny. I think we have an advan-tage as doctors. We go on autopilot, askill we begin learning in the first days ofinternship and residency. Our patients areour patients—not good guys/bad guys/Idon’t know what side he’s on guys. Wesee bleeding, we see broken, we see thingsthat need fixing.

That night, Rick and Bernard spentfour hours trying to plug the leaks thatAmerican bullets had made in an enemybody. The X-rays on the OR viewboxdidn’t list nationality, the scalpel didn’tcut differently into flesh that was hostile,and the blood pooling inside the pelviswas no less red than that which flowedthrough our veins.

As Rick and Bernard tried to piecetogether a torn body, I worked away inthe ER, caring for several guys who hadlucked out with some minor scrapes andcuts from yet another roadside bomb.

Their wounds weren’t life-threatening, sowhen word filtered from the OR that myfriends needed an extra set of handsquickly, I left my American soldiers andscrubbed in. What kind of doctor walkedaway from his own GIs to try to save theenemy?

When I pushed open the doors of theOR, I was greeted by the mellow musicof Motown softly playing in the back-ground. Our usual surgical accompani-ment of Aerosmith or Springsteen was onpause for this case.

As I edged my way toward the table, Iglanced at the bomber’s pale and sicklyface, which sported the slightest wisp of amustache.

“Where do you want me?” I asked.

Rick pointed next to Bernard on thefar side of the table. Besides the faintmusic in the background, there were fewwords heard. It was all business.

“Kelly clamp.”

“Metzenbaum.”

“Dave, shift that suction for a second;we’ve got to get down in there. Can’t see.”

I pushed a step to the side andbumped into a body that wasn’t supposedto be there. Turning, I realized it was ourchaplain. She was bent over at the headof the OR table, her hand tightly grasp-ing the limp hand of the insurgent. Itwas her third night in a row spent in ourcompany, and that of the enemy.

Through her mask, I could see thefaint facial movements of her mouthing aprayer. I wondered to whom she waspraying. Was it the God I believed in?Allah? Some generic supreme being? Itdidn’t matter. Our chaplain would comeand hold the hand of any critical patienton the table. Friend or foe, there was nodistinction. She took the same approachas we physicians; it was a human beingon the table, one that needed urgentmedical or spiritual care. The right,wrong or morality of it could be arguedby others—others who weren’t standingin our bloody boots.

The case continued.

“Sponge. No, give me two or three.Quick.”

“More suction.”

“Tie that bleeder off.”

and into surgery to explore abdomens,cleanse wounds and complete amputa-tions. Within another few hours, ourpatients would be on a plane toLandstuhl, Germany, for more definitivecare, and back to the States within twodays. Our fast food medical missionwould be accomplished: get ’em in, get’em out. In other words, keep them alive,and then let someone else down the linedo the fancy work.

But it didn’t always work that way.

As our surgical cases drew to a close,the ER doors crashed open with a racingblood-stained stretcher whose occupantwore civilian clothes. The rolling wheelsleft bloody tracks on the floor.

“Gunshot wounds chest, abdomen andpelvis. BP 92/48. Pulse 140. Spontaneousrespirations 42.”

The flight medic’s voice was rapid fireand businesslike. As our staff went towork to secure IV lines and cut off cloth-ing, he pulled me aside.

“Doc, it’s another one of those bastards.Same road. We popped this guy just as hewas covering the bomb with dirt.”

The rest of the story dissolved into adistant mishmash of words. It was nowour job to save the life of an insurgentwhose occupation was to blow up oursoldiers, leaving them with mangledlimbs and scarred faces—wounded whowould begin each morning strapping onartificial limbs and looking into mirrorsthat answered with faces nothing like theones they had left home with. They werebut young kids, an average age of 22.They should have been going to parties.

“Here we were: Americandoctors dressed asAmerican soldiers. We wore uniforms, carried weapons and evensaluted when we had to.Now we faced the litmustest of our oaths: UncleSam versus Hippocrates.”

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 13

After 20 units of American blood andbuckets of American sweat, Rick andBernard closed the chest, abdomen andpelvis. The IED planter still had achance.

As I walked through the blanketeddoor of the OR, I was hit with a blast ofsteaming night air. We lived in a worldwhere it typically was a toasty 135degrees during the day, dropping to achilly 105 at night. The waiting soldiersin the ER were stable, and as I looked atthe final CT scan on a viewbox, one ofthe nurses tugged on my sleeve.

“Sir, we heard a couple of family mem-bers came to the gate for your patient.”

Tired and confused, I asked, “What?Which patient?”

“The bomber. Guards ran them off.”

I shook my head and trudged back outto where Rick and Bernard slumpedexhausted against a concrete blast wall.They handed me a stale ham and cheesesandwich.

For a good half hour, they were silent except for occasional spurts ofexhausted anxiety.

“I hope that oozing stops.”

“That liver had more holes than thischeese.”

“Man, those retroperitoneal tears are a bitch.”

Just as I told them that I’d keep an eye on the patient while they got someshuteye, one of the nurses walked out ofthe ICU.

“Doctors, he’s bleeding again and hispressure is dropping.”

With a series of grunts, we staggeredup to scrub again.

Rick and Bernard had done a hell of ajob putting together the jigsaw puzzlethat was once a functioning human, butthis puzzle was missing more than a fewpieces. No matter what, when a person’sblood stops clotting, there is nothingmore you can do. The insurgent wentinto cardiac arrest three times on thetable, and three times was shocked backto life. Yet it wasn’t enough. There wasnothing left to sew because with everystick of the needled suture, a fresh flowof blood began.

We were witnessing the “rude unhing-ing of the machinery of life”—a phrase

that the going rate for shoveling a holewas $20 a dig. I stared at the adolescentattempt at a grown-up mustache.

Our insurgent was just 16 years old.And his family had returned to the gate.

We simply walked away, not saying aword. Our steps out of the ICU mirroredthose of old men—slow, shuffling andsullen. We got 30 feet until we suddenlystopped and craned our necks upward.The sky was silent, but the vibrationswere felt by all.

Photos courtesy of Dr. Hnida

“Our chaplain wouldcome and hold the hand ofany critical patient on thetable. Friend or foe, therewas no distinction. Shetook the same approach aswe physicians; it was ahuman being on the table,one that needed urgentmedical or spiritual care.”

coined during the Civil War to describethe process of a body rapidly going intoshock, a condition where blood ceases toclot, blood pressure plummets and theheart exhausts itself to a standstill.Throughout the ages, countless physi-cians have stood by helplessly as theirpatients spiraled down the pathway todeath; there was nothing they could doto halt the journey. We reluctantly joinedthat centuries-old fraternity.

It was time to close up the abdomenand come up with plan B. But we knewthere was no plan B for this insurgent.He died about 15 minutes later.

At the foot of his bed, the three of usquietly stood pondering his limp body,shaking our heads slowly as we tried tofigure out why he had planted the IEDin the first place. He probably needed afew bucks for his family; we had heard


After graduating from PhiladelphiaCollege of Osteopathic Medicine andcompleting his training in family medi-cine at the United States Public HealthService Hospital in Staten Island, NewYork, Dr. Veit set off for the tiny town of Orbisonia, Pennsylvania, population800. As medical director of theSouthern Huntington County MedicalCenter located among the hills and hol-lows of central Pennsylvania, he realizedhis goal of being a rural doctor whilefulfilling his obligation as a scholarshiprecipient from the National HealthService Corps.

“I wanted to be a doctor who made adifference to the people of a small town,”recalls Dr. Veit, who was strongly influ-enced by his experience with underservedcommunities during his clinical rotationsat PCOM’s Healthcare Centers.

During his three years in Orbisonia, helearned that being a small town doctor ismuch more than just taking care ofpatients. It’s also taking care of the com-munity. “As a small town physician, youare iconic in a way,” he reflects.

care we could under those circumstances.We gave her antibiotics for the infectionand tried to adjust her other medication,instructing her to take only certainpills—and no whiskey. We left thinkingshe was going to die within a few weeks.Five years later, I was surprised andhappy to hear that she was still alive. It was a lesson in adapting to the situa-tion where you’re providing care.”

Dr. Veit also learned and taught hisstudents the practical importance of having the broad-based knowledge of ageneralist and the flexibility to addressthe unexpected. “Since Orbisonia was 40 miles away from the nearest hospital,the medical center often served as anER,” he says. “We were the first contactfor gunshot wounds, chainsaw lacera-tions, logging accidents and rescues offthe mountain top.”

These are lessons that he carried withhim long after he left Orbisonia in 1979to serve as the National Health ServiceCorps’ regional medical coordinator forrural communities in Pennsylvania,Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia.

At the same time, Dr. Veit discoveredthat he enjoyed teaching students. He wonapproval for the county medical center tobecome a rural medicine training site forPCOM students and immediately beganteaching them what he had only justbegun to learn himself. “As a doctor, youhave to adapt the care you provide to thecommunity you serve,” he relates. “Thiscommunity was very diverse and differentculturally than any I had known before.”

Reflecting on his first house call, heremembers entering a dilapidated two-room shack. He and a medical studentfound an elderly patient in bed. Next toher bed was a jar of multicolored pills.“Every pill that any doctor had everdropped off to her she dumped into thisjar, all mixed together,” he remembers.“Next to the jar was a bottle of whiskey.When she didn’t feel well, she wouldreach in the jar and grab a handful ofpills and down them with whiskey.

“We did an examination and she wasin bad shape,” he continues. “We toldher that she needed to go to the hospital,but she refused. So we provided the best

kenneth j. veit, DO ’76, MBA, FACOFP2012 RECIPIENT OF THE O.J. SNYDER MEMORIAL MEDAL

by Nancy West

daYFounders’

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 15


After nearly two years, Dr. Veit found that he missedbeing a clinician. He contacted the late Tom Rowland, former PCOM president, and a week later was hired as aphysician in the College’s growing Department of FamilyMedicine. Dr. Veit was particularly drawn to PCOM’sHealthcare Centers which he saw as offering more than justthe delivery of health care. “Providing care to underservedcommunities in our Healthcare Centers is part of our teaching responsibility,” he says. “What happens in thesefacilities goes beyond the medicine. It affects the way students will practice in the future by teaching them aboutsystem-based care, professionalism and other attributes ofbeing a good physician. What students learn in ourHealthcare Centers supersedes clinical knowledge, regardlessof what discipline they choose in the future.”

The Healthcare Centers ultimately put Dr. Veit on the pathto administrative roles of ever-increasing responsibility. In1984, he was appointed director of the healthcare centers andchairman of the division of community medicine. Five yearslater, he was appointed director of medical education, and in1990, became assistant dean, graduate medical education.

Two years later, he was named dean of the College, a posthe has held for 20 years, bringing a long period of stabilityand growth to PCOM. Now provost, senior vice presidentof academic affairs and dean, Dr. Veit takes pride inPCOM’s progress on many fronts while lauding theCollege’s traditional osteopathic curriculum.

Dr. Veit is gratified by the remarkable growth of PCOM’sgraduate medical education program along with theCollege’s overall affiliations with hospitals statewide andregional. “Maintaining and expanding our graduate andprofessional medical education program has been critical toproviding our graduates with options as hospitals have con-solidated, merged or closed over the last 20 years,” he notes.“We now have core affiliations with 32 well-respected insti-tutions where our students spend quality time during clerk-ships and our graduates receive excellent training.”

During the past two decades, Dr. Veit has also overseenPCOM’s expansion of academic offerings to include gradu-ate degree programs in biomedical sciences, forensic medi-cine, organizational development and leadership, physicianassistant studies, psychology and pharmacy, as well as theCollege’s establishment of a branch campus in GwinnettCounty, Georgia. “All these programs enhance PCOM as aninstitution and position us well for the future when medi-cine will be delivered in more of a team approach,” henotes. “Going forward, medical schools will need to developmodels that teach this early in the educational experience;our current academic mix of programs has positioned us tolead that effort.”

As chair of the Commission on Osteopathic CollegeAccreditation and the Board of Deans of the AmericanAssociation of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM)as well as a member of the steering committee of theAmerican Osteopathic Association (AOA)/AACOM BlueRibbon Commission for the Advancement of OsteopathicMedicine, Dr. Veit has witnessed tremendous growth inosteopathic medical education. “When I started at PCOM,there were five osteopathic schools in the country. There arenow 34, including branch campuses, and the profession con-tinues to grow, ever instilling pride in the osteopathic her-itage and reaffirming a commitment to recruit and trainstudents who will employ holistic approaches to clinical,didactic and other professional responsibilities.”

Dr. Veit’s contributions to the profession have been rec-ognized through the receipt of the Commissioned OfficerSuperior Service Award (1979), the U.S. Public HealthService Humanitarian Medal (1981), a Shankweiler fellow-ship – Muhlenberg College (1995), the AACOM DaleDodson Award (2002) and the Alumni Association ofPCOM Certificate of Honor (2008).

Yet Dr. Veit notes his greatest pride is his family. He and his wife of 37 years, Cindy, have three children(daughter Alicia and sons Daniel and Jonathan) and fourgrandchildren (Gabriel, Nathaniel, Anna and Abigail).

Looking ahead, Dr. Veit sees continued growth andchange for PCOM. “We must continue to be creative andchallenge ourselves as the healthcare environment evolves,”he says. “PCOM is well positioned to lead into the future; I continue to appreciate the opportunity to contribute tothe advancement of the College’s Mission.”

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 17

Mr. Bryan was part of a collaborative effort to implementthe Tegrity lecture capture system and the conversion ofstudent e-mail to Google Mail for all PCOM students. At the national level, Mr. Bryan worked with the Councilof Osteopathic Student Government Presidents to develop and implement a plan to improve COMLEXPerformance Evaluation feedback and to ensure more consistent student scoring.

A staunch advocate for osteopathic medicine, Mr. Bryan’s goals for the future include serving the community as an emergency physician and EMS director while continuing to offer austere medical training through his company.

Mr. Bryan always had two goals: to serve his country andto pursue a career in medicine. He aimed for both by enlist-ing in the U.S. Navy for eight years as a hospital corpsmanand special amphibious reconnaissance corpsman, providingmedical support to Special Operations units. As a fieldmedic, he often went behind enemy lines in Iraq to care forwounded U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.

In combat, Mr. Bryan experienced firsthand the waymedicine can transcend cultural, ethnic and religious barri-ers. “I realized my job as a healthcare provider was infinite-ly more than just stabilizing casualties,” he reflects. “Mydeeds, no matter how small, gave hope and comfort topeople . . . . As I treated a wounded child during the siegeof Najaf, Iraq, I looked up to see an enemy fighter and aU.S. Marine both watching with concern. At that momentI treated one child, but gave hope to three war-batteredmen. Medicine unites people with hope.”

These experiences strengthened his resolve to pursue acareer as an emergency physician.

Like all military medics in Special Operations forces, Mr. Bryan was expected to do more with less, improvisingto overcome the odds for patients. In response, he devel-oped and later patented tactical tourniquets and splintsthat are currently being used by the military.

Mr. Bryan notes that when resources were scant, osteo-pathic physicians always stood out. “The DOs had far moreto offer in an austere environment where we had only themost basic medical equipment and supplies available,” hesays. “They were better able to improvise. They were morecomfortable diagnosing problems with their hands. Andtheir use of osteopathic manipulative medicine often pre-vented the need to transport soldiers back to the U.S. forpain management. People would actually drive through dan-gerous territory with IEDs and wait in line for the DO to relieve their back pain with manipulation.”

After leaving the Navy in 2006, Mr. Bryan founded hisown company, Ethos Solutions LLC, which provides aus-tere medical training and development to military and lawenforcement officers. During the same time frame, hebegan his medical education at PCOM.

As president of the PCOM Student GovernmentAssociation, Mr. Bryan helped to rewrite the constitutionand bylaws to reflect PCOM’s expansion into new academ-ic programs. He also involved all PCOM students in com-munity outreach by helping to establish an annual PCOMOutreach Day. As technology representative for his class,

rOBert tiMOthy BryAn (DO ’12)2012 RECIPIENT OF THE MASON W. PRESSLY MEMORIAL MEDAL


Building Social andEmotional Competence inPreschool Children by Nancy West

Expelled from day care! This may sound like a joke from alate-night TV show, but the problem is very real for a growingnumber of preschoolers in urban child care centers nation-wide. Increasingly, children between ages three and five areexperiencing significant behavioral problems, some seriousenough to warrant expulsion from their child care programs.

Young children in urban settings often are not learning thesocial and emotional skills they need to interact appropriatelywith others, according to Shannon Sweitzer, PhD, clinical assis-tant professor, psychology, PCOM, who specializes in schoolpsychology for young children. “These skills have to be taught,both at home and in the child care setting. The earlier they aretaught and the earlier we address behavioral problems, themore likely that our interventions will be successful,” she says.

During a postdoctoral fellowship at Special People InNortheast, a Philadelphia-based organization that assists indi-viduals with intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilitiesand autism, Dr. Sweitzer worked with three urban child carecenters to promote social and emotional competence and toprevent and address challenging behavior in children.

Evidence-based holistic approach“We know that young children’s mental health development

and social and mental well-being is really dependent on thosearound them, particularly their parents and child care teach-ers,” says Dr. Sweitzer. “The key to success is a holisticapproach where we work not just with the child, but witheveryone who comes in contact with the child.”

Using this evidence-based approach, Dr. Sweitzer imple-mented a curriculum with four- and five-year-olds at the threecenters designed to improve social skills, friendship skills andcoping skills for various emotions such as anger and fear. Thecurriculum also helps children to develop emotional literacy—the ability to identify what they are feeling and articulate it.

For the child care staff, she provided education and supportby discussing various approaches to behavioral problems,explaining typical early childhood development and demon-strating ways to implement developmentally appropriate prac-tices in the child care setting. “We showed the teachers how toincorporate lessons that help children develop emotional liter-acy, and we discussed how to model problem-solving skillsand conflict resolution.”

Just as important, Dr. Sweitzer acted as a sounding boardfor the staff regarding their own personal challenges in lifeand their impact on the child care they provide.

“Many child care staff inurban centers live in thesame neighborhood asthe children in theircare. They livewith many of thesame stressorsthe childrenhave in theirhomes, suchas financialworries andconcernsabout per-sonal safety,”says Dr.Sweitzer. “It’simportant tohelp the staff seehow what’s hap-pening in theirown lives impacts theway they view the worldand how they interact withthe children.”

For parents at each of the three centers, Dr. Sweitzer con-ducted group discussions to provide support and educationabout child development.

“Our primary goal with this collaborative approach is tohelp prevent behavioral problems,” she explains. “We alsoteach how to identify these problems early and how to usesupports within the community or child care center to man-age them. As a result, we have found that the overall qualityof the child care program generally improves because the focusshifts to creating a nurturing, safe and developmentally appro-priate environment for children and staff.”

A survey of child care staff at the three child care centersfollowing this program showed an increase in satisfaction.Teachers reported that they felt more capable of managing

One Preschooler’s Success Below is an example of how building social and emotional

competence helped one preschooler:

A four-year-old boy, John, who had recently started attendinga preschool program began having frequent outbursts of physicaland verbal aggression directed toward his teachers and peers.

Dr. Sweitzer met with John’s mother, who explained that shehad recently fled an extremely abusive relationship with herhusband. Prior to leaving, John had witnessed his father’sdomestic violence against his mother, who was about sevenmonths pregnant. Now she and John were living in a homelessshelter for abused women and children.

Dr. Sweitzer took a multi-pronged approach to help John withhis behavioral issues. Since his mother wasn’t comfortable talkingin parent groups, Dr. Sweitzer worked with her individually toprovide education about domestic violence and the impact it hason the victim, the children and the family unit as a whole. Shehelped her to develop a plan to keep herself and her family safe,and encouraged her to share information with John’s teachers tohelp them understand why he was acting out in school.

After John’s mother told the teachers about John’s historyof witnessing domestic violence, Dr. Sweitzer educated theteachers about the effects of domestic violence on young chil-dren. She provided them with ways to predict John’s triggersand to intervene and help him calm down faster when out-bursts occurred. She also gave them the opportunity to expresstheir frustration about his challenging behavior.

At the same time, Dr. Sweitzer and the staff worked with Johnin the children’s circle group to help him learn how to identifyhis feelings and the physiological sensations associated with them,as well as anger management /coping skills to deal with them. Dr. Sweitzer and the staff educated John’s mother about how

to reward and reinforce positive behaviors at home as well as thebehaviors they were working on at school.As a result of these interventions, John was able to stay in

preschool throughout the year. His behavioral incidencesdecreased and the teachers were better prepared to managethem when they did occur. The teachers also had more empa-thy for John once they understood the serious trauma he hadexperienced. In addition, John and his mother each began get-ting individual psychotherapy to further address their issues.

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 19

behavior problems and better supported in these efforts.The center directors reported that the staff seemed morecapable. In addition, Dr. Sweitzer observed that teacherturnover seemed to decline.

Tackling the issue with integratedhealth careThe key adults in a preschool child’s life—parents, teach-

ers and primary care providers—play a crucial role in recog-nizing behavioral challenges and getting access to theappropriate mental health services. Yet the U.S. PublicHealth Service has determined that there is a general lack ofrecognition of mental health problems and their warningsigns within early childhood education systems and health-care systems. Research has shown that only one in four chil-dren with a current mental health disorder is identified bythe child’s pediatrician or family physician.

One solution to this dilemma is an integrated healthcaremodel that includes an early childhood mental health spe-cialist on site in pediatric and family practice offices. Thismodel has been incorporated into an early childhood schoolpsychology practicum conceived by Rosemary Mennuti,EdD, NCSP, director, school psychology program, PCOM.

After learning how to screen young children for socialand emotional issues, PCOM doctoral students in school psychology get hands-on experience in preschool classroomsettings and at PCOM Healthcare Center – LancasterAvenue Division. At Lancaster Avenue, under faculty super-vision, the students screen young pediatric patients identi-fied by Center physicians. The students then talk to

parents, communicate with the physicians about their find-ings and recommend resources in the community for fur-ther evaluation and intervention services.

Research underscores importanceResearch studies have underscored the importance of early

intervention in a child’s ability to succeed in school, work andlife in general. One study found that social and behavioralcompetency in young children predicts their academic per-formance in first grade more accurately than their IQ.Another study showed that children who participate in high-quality early child care programs that include a focus on socialand emotional skill development tend to have decreased ratesof criminal behavior, better academic performance andincreased adult earning potential.

Progress through partnershipPartnerships among primary care physicians, parents, child

care staff and early childhood mental health specialists are keyto early intervention in preschool behavioral problems.

Pediatricians and family physicians play a vital role inflagging developmental delays and other indicators ofbehavior problems. “It is important for all care providersto listen to parents because they usually have their fingeron the pulse of their children’s problems,” notes Dr.Sweitzer. “When parents say that something just isn’tright, there is a good chance that their concern warrantsfurther evaluation. And the earlier we catch any difficul-ties, the more likely that our interventions will reap suc-cess for the child.”

MR images must not only detect subtledifferences in shades of gray, but must alsobe able to visually compare the many indi-vidual images—there may be up to a hun-dred—that a single MR imaging sessionproduces. Trained in histology, whichinvolves staining tissues to enhance theirnatural contrast before examining themwith a microscope, Dr. Brown thought,“We could do almost the same thing withMRI images if we could handle them theright way.”

Dr. Brown describes his patentedprocess as “assigning color to a biophysi-cal characteristic. So it’s an automaticsegmentation algorithm for MRI data.”The biophysics of the tissue itself, inother words, is what uniquely determinesthe color. “If you assign an unusual colorto something pathological,” he adds, “itshows up very well.”

A mathematical basisThe general benefits of Dr. Brown’s

color MRI methodology are twofold. First,the methodology provides a mathematicalbasis for distinguishing between things.

“Color is a way of segmenting or charac-terizing different tissues and fluids so that acomputer can tell them apart mathemati-

pathologic tissue information within thecontext of partially natural-appearingimages.” Dr. Brown was subsequentlyissued a patent on the methodologiesused in that study, the first of four patentshe now holds.

Dr. Brown came to GA–PCOM in2010, where he teaches courses in neuro-science and anatomy. Born in ruralGeorgia, he graduated from Georgia’sAugusta College. He received an MS inanatomy (electron microscopy) from theMedical College of Georgia and a PhDin clinical anatomy and neuroscience atTulane University in New Orleans.

Thinking like a histologistDr. Brown first became interested in

MRI as a clinical associate professor ofradiology at USFHSC, where he was alsoa tenured associate professor of anatomy.How, he wondered, could the multiplesets of graytone images produced by MRIbe used to make a full-color image?

“Humans can distinguish only sixteengraytones,” notes Dr. Brown, “but can tellthousands of colors apart. A subtle changein graytones can be important but can bemissed. Color differences are much morelikely to be seen.” Radiologists who read


PIONEERINGCOLORIN MRI IMAGING by Janice Fisher

H. Keith Brown, PhD, professor,anatomy, Georgia Campus – PCOM,had a 23-year-old daughter with analarming problem: an ovarian mass.Because of the pain the mass caused andits appearance on ultrasound, physicianswere considering removing one of theyoung woman’s ovaries.

In a rather remarkable coincidence, Dr.Brown, then a professor of anatomy at theUniversity of South Florida HealthSciences Center (USFHSC), was investi-gating the use of color magnetic resonanceimaging to differentiate ovarian masses, inresearch supported by a grant from NASAand the Florida Division of the AmericanCancer Society. When color MRI was per-formed, his daughter’s mass was revealedto most likely be a type of luteal cyst thatdisappears on its own with the next men-strual cycle. After a month, the cyst didindeed go away, says Dr. Brown, and hisdaughter’s ovary was saved. Dr. Brown’s daughter became Case 1 in

a paper published with colleagues in theJournal of Computer Assisted Tomographyin 1993. As the study concluded, histechnique made it “possible to generatecomposites that simultaneously displayuniquely color-coded anatomic and

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 2121

cally,” Dr. Brown explains, thereby helpingto discriminate features and the physiologic status of tissues, as in the caseof his daughter’s cyst. Another applicationis 3-D reconstruction from MRI data,which requires a labor-intensive segmenta-tion scheme in which the boundariesbetween different tissues are outlined. Thecolor MRI technique makes this tediousprocess automatic. Dr. Brown’s most recentpatents focus on 3-D full-color MRI.

Color is intuitiveThe second benefit of color MRI is that

color visualization is simply more intuitive.In fact, the images generated by the first

MRI machine, built by RaymondDamadian and colleagues in 1977 and nowhoused in the Smithsonian Institution,were augmented with colored pencils.

Later efforts at color MRI applicationswere rejected—and with good reason,according to Dr. Brown. “They did some-thing like weather mapping,” he explains,“assigning color to different ranges ofpixel intensity values. ‘From 0 to 75 we’llmake green’ and so on.” The results, hesays, were “crude and looked psychedelic.. . . You got abrupt color changes thatdidn’t reflect what medical images shouldlook like.” Dr. Brown’s software makesuse of the RGB (red, green, blue) colormodel, which allows for a total displaypalette of more than 16.7 million colors.Color is assigned to magnetic resonanceparameters, which are then combinedinto a single color-coded image.

Because Dr. Brown’s methodology canenhance perception of anatomical struc-tures, people who are not trained as radiol-ogists can better understand MRI images.Color MRI could be helpful to physiciansin other specialties, to patients and to stu-dents. Dr. Brown shows color MRI in hiscourses. “I have some images of kneeswhere you can see the pathology [of juve-nile rheumatoid arthritis] so clearly—somestudents get very excited,” he says.

Why is an MRI like aspinning top?More than 30 million MRI proce-

dures were performed in 2010,according to a market survey of MRsites in the United States, usingabout 6,800 scanners in hospitalsand freestanding imaging centers.Magnetic resonance imaging—origi-nally called nuclear magnetic reso-nance, because the technologymeasures the magnetic properties ofatomic nuclei—came into wide-spread use in the 1980s.

“MRI makes images that are mapsof the biophysical characteristics sur-rounding protons,” Dr. Brownexplains. “If a person goes into astrong magnetic field that’s polarized,you have a net alignment of protonsso they are (mostly) aligned with thatfield. A radio pulse hits the body,knocking the protons out of align-ment. It’s just like when you thump aspinning top: it wobbles and comesback to alignment. Those protonsalso come back into alignment, andin the process they give off a radiosignal. All the protons in your bodybecome radio transmitters, transmit-ting radio pulses back out.

“The time it takes for them to dothat,” he continues, “depends on theatomic and molecular environmentaround the protons. Protons in fatare much more free to move thanprotons in muscle. In bone they canhardly move at all; in cerebrospinalfluid they move easily.”

See for yourself Pictured above are four images

representing different MR parameters ofthe same slice level through a normalabdomen. T1 = longitudinal relaxationtime; T2 = transverse relaxation time; IR = inversion recovery; GRE = gradientecho sequence.

The color MRI of the same slice levelhas all those parameters, but the singleimage makes it easier to visualize and quickly differentiate tissues by their color.Watery fluid is identified in the duodenum and renal pelvis, and as cerebrospinalfluid around the spinal cord. The difference in MRI contrast behavior between liverand kidney is more readily visualized and appreciated.

The need for collaboratorsDr. Brown hopes students and resi-

dents will go on to become his collabora-tors in controlled studies. Standardizeddata collection is critical. A technologistmight make a small change in techniqueto shave off a few minutes from a studyor might change the matrix in the fieldof view or magnification factor. Machinesfrom different manufacturers producesubtly different images. All of these vari-ables could affect the color results.

Data sets from patients who wouldpermit the use of their (anonymized)images are of great interest to Dr. Brown.“If we had, say, twenty cases of intracra-nial hemorrhage, we would send theimages to participating radiologists toread those data sets diagnostically withthe color MRI as an adjunct and anotherset as controls. Ken Slavik [PhD, chiefscientific officer, PCOM] has given mesome names of radiologists to contactwho’ve been associated with PCOM. I’mworking with a local neurosurgeon, DonPenney, MD, and a radiologist, FredKatz, DO, on a current project onintracranial hemorrhage. We have to gettechnicians and radiologists on board sothey can collect the data as they want itfor graytone viewing and we can also useit for our purposes.”

Photos courtesy of Dr. Brown

T1 T2 IR GRE


CLass notes

CLASS OF 1945Arnold Melnick, DO, Aventura, FL, pub-lished Effective Medical Communication,which features six years’ worth of columnsfrom The DO. Dr. Melnick’s book highlightspractical advice on medical writing, medicalspeaking and patient communication. It isavailable for purchase through the AmericanOsteopathic Medical Association:www.osteopathic.org/store.

CLASS OF 1954Paul M. Steingard, DO, Phoenix, AZ, wasprofiled in the Arizona Business Journal(November 18, 2011). Dr. Steingard is theowner of Steingard Medical Group, whichspecializes in family practice and sports med-icine. He was the team physician for thePhoenix Suns for 23 years; he is now theteam’s physician emeritus.

CLASS OF 1960Keith A. Buzzell, DO, Conway, NH, wasappointed medical director at WhiteMountain Community Health Center.

CLASS OF 1966Richard D. Lynch, DO, San Antonio, TX, wasappointed to the scientific advisory board ofComputer Vision Systems Laboratories Corp.

CLASS OF 1967John F. Callahan, DO, Dallas, PA, was hon-ored by the Advocates for the PennsylvaniaOsteopathic Medical Association during the2012 POMA convention.

CLASS OF 1968Charles E. Parker, DO, Virginia Beach, VA,is a child and adult psychiatrist specializing indiagnostic and medical services for troubledchildren, adolescents and adults. Dr. Parker’slatest book, ADHD Medication Rules, is avail-able for purchase through amazon.com. Dr.Parker is also the author of Deep Recovery anda blog: CorePsychBlog.

CLASS OF 1970Arthur J. Mollen, DO, Scottsdale, AZ, andhis Mollen Clinic received the Fit for LifeAward presented by the American OsteopathicFoundation and Pfizer. Dr. Mollen is the med-ical director of Southwest Health Limited,doing business as the Mollen Clinic.

Joel J. Rock, DO, Westfield, NJ, wasappointed osteopathic physician representa-tive to the New Jersey State Board of MedicalExaminers by Governor Chris Christie. Dr.Rock practices at James Street AnesthesiaAssociates in Edison.

miLt kogan, do ’60, md, mphFinding and Redefining Himself“Don’t get too comfortable” could be Dr. Kogan’s motto. Perhaps it started

when he enrolled in PCOM after only three years at Cornell University. It con-tinued during his internship in Southern California where, in addition to work-ing 36-hour shifts, he enrolled in acting classes on a lark. But acting, it turnedout, was more than a folly. “Acting totally turned me around,” recalls Dr. Kogan.“Through college and medical school I had always conformed. I had never

really explored myself,” he explains. “Acting forced me to challenge myself. I wasfascinated by acting as an art form, and it became an important part of my life.” After he completed his internship, Dr. Kogan decided to commit himself to

acting. But after six months he reassessed his decision. So he returned to medi-cine, practicing during the day and acting at night. His love of acting grew. Hegot an agent and began getting roles, mostly in commercials. “I was lucky,” heexplains. “It was a time when they were casting regular-looking people in com-mercials. I became a very successful commercial actor.” Commercials led tomovie roles and television appearances. He woke up one day, he says, and once again questioned his work. Dr. Kogan

stepped away from acting, and made arrangements to teach and practice medi-cine on a floating campus, the University of the Seven Seas. After sailing aroundthe world, he returned to acting. He appeared on television shows includingBarney Miller and Kojak and in movies including E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial andThe Sunshine Boys. One acting success turned into another—leaving little timefor medicine or, he discovered, for personal reflection. To this end, Dr. Kogan joined the Peace Corps. He moved with his wife and

two young children to Burkina Faso, West Africa, dedicating three years to serv-ice. When he returned to the States, Dr. Kogan continued acting and practicingmedicine in Beverly Hills while intermittently taking breaks to serve the needy.One two-year stint with the National Health Service Corps, which he is espe-cially fond of recalling, took him to Harlowton, Montana, a small ranchingcommunity. “PCOM instilled in me a strong belief in giving back, which iswhy I continue to work with underserved populations,” he explains.Today, Dr. Kogan practices family medicine with a special interest in geriatric

mental health. He also continues to act. At times his two loves intersect; herecently played Dr. Johnston in the Oscar-winning film The Descendants.

Dr. Kogan (center) with actor George Clooney (left) and director Alexander Payne on the set of The Descendants.

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 23

CLass notes

E-MAIL YOUR NEWS AND PHOTOS TO MADELINE LAW: [email protected]

CLASS OF 1971Robert R. Speer, DO, Stone Harbor, NJ;Thomas J. Puskas, DO, Monument, CO; andRichard A. Renza, DO, Cape May Courthouse,NJ, report that they went on their annual ski tripto Vail, Colorado, in December 2011.

CLASS OF 1974John T. Johnson, Sr., DO, Davenport, IA,was featured in the article “PioneeringPhysician Keeps Hand in Medicine,” pub-lished in USA Today (February 27, 2012).

Richard G. Tucker, DO, Mount Laurel, NJ,has a solo practice in Mount Laurel and servesas clinical associate professor of OB/GYN,PCOM.

CLASS OF 1979Paul Keshishian, DO, Rivervale, NJ, wasappointed township physician of RochellePark, New Jersey. In this capacity, he alsoserves as the physician for the school and vol-unteer ambulance corps.

William B. Swallow, DO, Lewistown, PA,joined the medical staff at Lewistown Hospital’sFamily Health Associates in Belleville.

CLASS OF 1981H. Timothy Dombrowski, DO, Stratford,NJ, with the University of Medicine andDentistry of New Jersey – School ofOsteopathic Medicine’s Camden SaturdayHealth Clinic, was the recipient of the Spiritof Humanity Award presented by theAmerican Osteopathic Foundation andAstraZeneca. Dr. Dombrowski was recentlyelected to the board of directors of theNational Board of Osteopathic Medicine.

James C. Ferraro, DO, Phoenix, AZ, servesas chairman of medicine at Banner EstrellaHospital.

Frank Paolantonio, DO, York, PA, was namedto the Physicians Advisory Board of the SusanG. Komen Foundation, Philadelphia affiliate.

CLASS OF 1982Morey J. Menacker, DO, Mahwah, NJ, wasappointed to the board of directors ofQualCare, Inc., in Piscataway. Dr. Menackerpractices at Forest Healthcare Associates andis a clinical professor of medicine at theUniversity of Medicine and Dentistry of NewJersey – School of Osteopathic Medicine.

CLASS OF 1983Howard A. Hassman, DO, Boca Raton, FL,co-authored the article “Development of a

Dean T. Filion, DO, Caldwell, NJ, celebrated his second Super Bowl win as amember of the medical staff of the New YorkGiants. Dr. Filion is the director of sportsmedicine at New Jersey Spine and SportsMedicine in Rutherford, New Jersey, and hasserved as a member of the New York Giantsmedical staff for the past 14 years.

CLASS OF 1992Charles F. Gorey, DO, Pottstown, PA, hadhis article “Here’s Looking at You: ImagingTests Are an Important Part of Your Health”published in the December 26, 2011, issue ofMercury. Dr. Gorey is a member of theDepartment of Family Medicine at PottstownMemorial Medical Center.

CLASS OF 1994Kirby J. Scott, IV, DO, Hagerstown, MD,joined the medical staff at Central ENTConsultants, PC.

CLASS OF 1995John B. Bulger, DO, Danville, PA, was re-elected to the board of trustees of theAmerican College of Osteopathic Internists.Dr. Bulger is presently serving as president ofthe Association of Osteopathic Directors andMedical Educators. He is chief quality officerand director of the hospitalist service line andof osteopathic medical education at GeisingerHealth Systems.

Kathleen E. Heer, DO, McColl, SC, joinedthe medical staff of Bladen County Hospitaland Women’s Health Specialists inElizabethtown.

Michael A. Kovalick, DO, Dallas, PA, waspromoted to Luzerne County departmentdirector, community practice. Dr. Kovalickwill provide leadership for five Geisinger pri-mary care clinics in Luzerne County.

J. Garry Wrobleski, Jr., DO, JeffersonTownship, PA, joined the medical staff atWayne Memorial Hospital in Honesdale.

CLASS OF 1996Gregory W. Coppola, DO, Erie, PA, is asports and integrative medicine specialist withMedical Associates of Erie. He also serves asclinical professor of sports medicine at theLake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Theresa White McHugh, DO, PlymouthMeeting, PA, was appointed medical directorof the Cancer Risk Assessment and GeneticsProgram at Main Line Health. Dr. McHughis the principal investigator for several cancergenetics–related projects at Main Line Health.

Clinical Global Impression Scale for Fatigue”published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research(January 9, 2012). Dr. Hassman is a memberof the board of trustees of the DevereuxFoundation.

Thomas Renaldo, DO, Allentown, PA, ofLehigh Valley Physicians Group and LVHNElder Care, and medical director of PhoebeAllentown Health Care Center, was appointedchief medical officer of Phoebe.

Richard J. Snow, DO, Columbus, OH, wasnamed vice president of Clinical Effectivenessof OhioHealth. Dr. Snow has additionallybeen elected as an initial member of the OhioPatient Centered Primary Care CoordinatingCouncil, a 14-member panel that will coordi-nate medical home initiatives in the state.

CLASS OF 1984Kenneth Heiles, DO, Harrogate, TN, wasappointed associate dean for Graduate MedicalEducation at Lincoln Memorial University –DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine.

CLASS OF 1987D. Todd Detar, DO, Johns Island, SC, wasinducted into the Pottstown (Pennsylvania)High School Alumni Honor Roll.

Thomas P. Marnejon, DO, Columbiana,OH, program director of the St. ElizabethHealth Center Internal Medical Residencyprogram, was the recipient of the 2011Master Teacher Award presented by theAmerican College of Physicians.

CLASS OF 1989Martin J. Wall, DO, Lancaster, PA, joinedHoly Spirit Health System. Dr. Wall willpractice at Dillsburg Family Health Center,Dillsburg, and Broad Street Family HealthCenter, Marysville.

CLASS OF 1990Andrew Cykiert, DO, Farmington Hills, MI,was elected president of the medical staff atBotsford Hospital.

Howard J. Sadinsky, DO, Woodbridge, CT,was the recipient of the Community ServiceAward presented by the Milford Chamber ofCommerce. Dr. Sadinsky serves on the med-ical staff at Milford Pediatric Group.

CLASS OF 1991Cynthia R. Fusco, DO, Yardley, PA, was fea-tured in the article “Launching a MedicalCareer,” published in the Northeast TimesINsider (February 22, 2012).


CLass notes

CLASS OF 1997Scott H. Culp, DO, Conshohocken, PA,joined the medical staff at North WalesFamily Medicine.

Stacey L. Fitch, DO, Limerick, PA, had herarticle “It’s Never Too Early: Arthritis CanStrike at Any Age” published in the November2011, issue of Mercury. Dr. Fitch is in practicewith Pottstown Medical Specialists and is anindependent member of the medical staff atPottstown Memorial Medical Center.

James W. Mansberger, DO, Huntingdon,PA, was elected vice chief of staff at JC BlairMemorial Hospital.

CLASS OF 1998Brian A. Clements, DO, Wilton, ME, joinedthe medical staff at Franklin Health Medicinein Farmington.

Stephen Evans, DO, Mountain Top, PA, isthe director of the osteopathic family residencyprogram at Geisinger Health Systems.

Jonathan M. Gusdorff, DO, Bryn Mawr,PA, and his wife, Jaime, opened a new CareSTAT Urgent Care walk-in medical facility inHavertown. Its purpose is to offer non-criticalmedical care to patients as an alternative tolong waits in the emergency room or whenthey cannot reach their primary physician.

Publishing & Enterprises (September 2011).Dr. Bevilacqua is vice president at LifeManagement Inc. He is a clinical psychologistspecializing in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Obinna U. Chukwuocha, DO, Decatur, TX,joined the medical staff at My BariatricSolutions. Dr. Chukwuocha will head MyBariatric Solutions’ aftercare program andassist patients during their pre-surgery dietrequirements for Lap Band, gastric sleeve andgastric bypass procedures.

Matthew M. Collins, DO, Glenside, PA, wasgranted medical staff privileges at GrandviewHospital. Dr. Collins is an associate atBuxmont Cardiology Associates in Sellersville.

CLASS OF 2001Michael G. Benninghoff, DO, Coatesville,PA, was named medical director ofWilmington Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit,Christiana Care Health Systems.

Jeffrey K. Kingsley, DO, Ellerslie, GA, has beenelected a member of the board of trustees of theAssociation of Clinical Research Professionals.

CLASS OF 2002Steven R. Blasi, DO, Easton, PA, has joined St.Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem as a geriatrician.

Laura Garawski Forlano, DO, Richmond,VA, was appointed deputy state epidemiologistfor the Virginia Department of Health (June2011). As of November 2011, Dr. Forlano isserving as acting director of the Office ofEpidemiology and acting state epidemiologistfor the Virginia Department of Health.

Terry L. Pummer, DO, Grenada, MS, joined the medical staff at Grenada LakeMedical Center.

CLASS OF 2003Thea Cooper Barton, DO, West Chester, PA,had her article “Give Your Baby a HealthyStart to Life with Good Prenatal Care” pub-lished in the November 14, 2011, issue ofMercury. Dr. Barton is a member of theDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology atPottstown Memorial Medical Center.

Donald C. Campbell, DO, Sewickley, PA,was appointed medical director of theUniversity of Pittsburgh Medical Center’sNorthwest Sports Medicine Program.

Joseph H. Kim, DO, Seaford, DE, was electedpresident of the medical staff at NanticokeHealth System. Dr. Kim is president-elect ofthe Delaware Academy of Family Physicians.

CLASS OF 2004Matthew J. Espenshade, DO, Harrisburg, PA,joined Fulton County Medical Center Special

Joseph M. Laureti, DO, Pen Argyl, PA, joinedAlliance Medical Group and the medical staff atthe Hazleton Health & Wellness Center.

Bradley J. Miller, DO, Northumberland, PA,was appointed director of the family medicineprogram at Williamsport Regional MedicalCenter in affiliation with Susquehanna Health.

James A. Tricarico, DO, Pittston, PA, hasjoined Geisinger Health Systems. Dr.Tricarico’s practice has been renamedGeisinger-Pittston North Main.

CLASS OF 1999Stacy L. Generalovich, DO, Newbury, OH,joined the medical staff at Akron Children’sHospital Pediatrics in Boardman. Dr.Generalovich and her husband, BrockGeneralovich, DO ’98, have two children,Luke and Sophia.

CLASS OF 2000Todd D. Applegate, DO, Madison, CT,joined the medical staff at the Hospital ofCentral Connecticut. Dr. Applegate maintainshis practice, Applegate Orthopedic SpineCenter, in Essex.

Louis J. Bevilacqua, Jr., PsyD,Downingtown, PA, released his latest book,When You Can’t Snap Out of It: Finding YourWay Through Depression, published by Tate

Certificates of MeritAlvin D. Dubin, DO ’56, Cherry Hill, NJ, was a recipient of the AmericanOsteopathic Association’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Certificate.

Mark S. Finkelstein, DO ’80, Aston, PA, was the recipient of the Dr. Floyd J. TreneryMedal presented by the American Osteopathic College of Radiology.

John A. Harrison, DO ’00, Nokesville, VA, was inducted as a fellow of the AmericanCollege of Surgeons.

John P. Kearney, member, PCOM Board of Trustees, Moosic, PA, was a recipient of theChapel of Four Chaplains’ highest honor, the Bronze Medal, presented at their AwardsPresentation on November 10, 2011. The Chapel and its awards were established in mem-ory of four military chaplains who served on the U.S.A.T. Dorchester during World War II.

Janice A. Knebl, DO ’82, Fort Worth, TX, was installed as the new chair of the boardof directors of the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners.

David M. Masiak, DO ’77, Gwynedd, PA, was inducted as a fellow of the AmericanCollege of Physicians.

James E. McHugh, DO ’68, Strafford, PA, was honored by Crozer-Keystone HealthSystem for his many years of faithful service.

Mark A. Monaco, DO ’89, was installed as president of the Pennsylvania OsteopathicMedical Association.

Pamela Quinn Taffera, DO ’07, Phoenixville, PA, was a recipient of the HumanitarianAward presented by the Chapel of Four Chaplains at their Awards Presentation onNovember 10, 2011. The Chapel and its awards were established in memory of fourmilitary chaplains who served on the U.S.A.T. Dorchester during World War II.

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 25

CLass notes


Services Department in McConnellsburg. Dr.Espenshade is on the medical staff at ArlingtonOrthopedics in Harrisburg.

Kelly M. Kopkowski, DO, Erie, PA, joined themedical staff at Saint Vincent Health Center.Dr. Kopkowski will serve as the hospital’s med-ical director of rehabilitation/physical medicine.

Heather A. Olex, DO, Media, PA, was pro-filed in the December 1, 2011, issue of MainLine Today. Her practice, Osteopathic MedicalAssociates, PLLC, specializes in osteopathicmanipulative treatment.

Kerry Anne Whitelock, DO, Port Matilda,PA, joined the medical staff at Mount NittanyPhysician Group.

CLASS OF 2005Anel M. Abreu, DO, Watertown, NY, joinedthe medical staff at the North CountryOrthopaedic Group.

Dennis R. Given, PsyD, Downingtown, PA,has his own group practice, PsychologyAssociates of Chester County, Inc. He workswith PCOM alumni Eileen Lightner, PsyD ’10, and George Villarose, PsyD ’06.Dr. Given provides onsite mental health services at Brandywine Village FamilyMedicine, a practice run by PCOM alumniFrancis W. Brennan, DO ’93, and LaurieAnn Gallagher, DO ’97.

Demetrios Menegos, DO, Philadelphia, PA,joined the medical staff at Main Line HealthCare Orthopaedics and Neurosciences.

Sarah M. Miller, DO, Natrona Heights, PA,joined the medical staff at West PennAllegheny Oncology Network at AlleghenyValley Hospital.

James Nace, DO, Cockeysville, MD, joinedthe Rubin Institute for Advanced Orthopedicsat Sinai Hospital. Dr. Nace is the academicdirector of the Institute’s Center for JointPreservation and Joint Replacement.

Kevin D. Richardson, DO, San Antonio,TX, joined the medical staff at NixOrthopaedic Center.

Brian A. Spencer, DO, State College, PA,joined Paul A. Suhey, DO ’84, at Martin &Suhey Orthopedics. Dr. Spencer will practicegeneral orthopedics with specialty emphasis inshoulder surgery and sports medicine.

CLASS OF 2006Nicole L. Balchune, DO, Kingston, PA,joined the medical staff at Geisinger MedicalGroup – Kingston.

Shaun R. Black, DO, Conneaut Lake, PA,joined the medical staff at Meadville Hospitaland Meadville Emergency Physicians PC.

Brian S. Galler, DO, Brownstown, MI, willbe starting an interventional cardiology fel-lowship at Winthrop University Hospital inMineola, New York, in July 2012.

Melissa L. Ozga, DO, New York, NY,joined the Department of Psychiatry andBehavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as the psychiatricliaison to the gynecological-oncology diseasemanagement team. Dr. Ozga was appointedinstructor at both Memorial Sloan-KetteringCancer Center and New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical College.

Daniel R. Pascucci, DO, Berlin, MD,received his board certification in sports med-icine from the American Osteopathic

Association. Dr. Pascucci is on the medicalstaff at Atlantic Orthopaedics.

Dennis C. Slagle, II, DO, Fairmount City, PA,is in his third year of a neonatology fellowshipat Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and MageeWomen’s Hospital, both part of UPMC.

CLASS OF 2007Bryan R. Barrett, DO, Toms River, NJ,joined the medical staff at OrthopaedicInstitute of Central Jersey with offices inWall, Toms River, Freehold and Red Bank.He treats non-operative acute and chronicorthopedic conditions and sports-related concussive injuries.

Lt. JasondUff, psyd ’08In a Fight AgainstWartime Stress

The stress of war isn’t feltonly on the battlefield. This issomething Lt. Duff knowswell. A clinical psychologistwho is also a psychiatric nursepractitioner, Lt. Duff recentlyspent eight months caring formilitary personnel at the naval base and detention operation at Guantanamo Bay(GTMO) as part of a Joint Stress Mitigation and Restoration Team. “Deploymentat GTMO can be overlooked, but it’s extremely stressful,” he says. “The troops areaway from home for up to a year. It’s physically dangerous and they are dealingwith a high level of scrutiny and psychological warfare.” In addition to deployment-related mental health issues that may include sleep and adjustment issues, depres-sion, suicidal thoughts and post-traumatic stress syndrome, the team sees mooddisorders unrelated to deployment.

“A lot of times people who are suffering won’t seek help, so we have to be cre-ative in our approach to identifying individuals who could use some assistance,”explains Lt. Duff. Some measures include bringing coffee to troops at midnightduring a 12-hour day and asking service members to watch for symptoms of dis-tress in one another. Lt. Duff even started a two-hour mental health radio show. Inaddition to music and interviews, he answered email and live, call-in questions. “Itwas fun, challenging and actually proved to be a very successful educational tool.”

Currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan, Lt. Duff continues to provide carefor military personnel through individual and group counseling and outreach.“I have a strong background in cognitive behavior therapy from PCOM,” heexplains. “It’s that theoretical concept that drives everything I do.”

Not only does Lt. Duff help the troops deal with the stress of deploymentand all that it entails, he also helps prepare them to go home. “There’s a saying,‘no man walks through the river and doesn’t get wet.’ No one doesn’t come outof this changed. My goal is to normalize the experience, let people know it’sOK to feel what they’re feeling.

“Every time I sit down with these men and women they have my respect. It’san honor to work with them,” he says. “It’s exhausting, but it’s always rewarding.”


CLass notes

26

Dennis A. Burachinsky, DO, Florham Park,NJ, joined the medical staff at ENT andAllergy Associates LLP in Somerville.

Sarah A. Pillus, DO, Conneaut Lake, PA, joined the medical staff at Meadville Hospital andMeadville Obstetrics and Gynecology Associates.

CLASS OF 2008Sharon E. Ferguson, DO, Keene, NH,joined the Family Medicine Department atCheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene.

David T. Steves, DO, Benton City, WA,joined the medical staff at Cowlitz FamilyHealth Center.

CLASS OF 2010Chadd K. Kraus, DO, Mechanicsburg, PA,was elected to the board of directors of theEmergency Medicine Residents’ Associationduring the American College of EmergencyPhysicians Scientific Assembly in SanFrancisco. Dr. Kraus is an emergency medicineresident at Lehigh Valley Health Network.

CLASS OF 2011Matthew G. McClellan, DO, Camp Hill,PA, is completing a one-year research fellow-ship in emergency medicine at Penn StateUniversity College of Medicine, Milton S.Hershey Medical Center.

Top Doc AwardsThe following PCOM alumni were recog-nized by Main Line Today (December 2011)as “Top Doctors” in their respective fields:

Michael D. Arbuckle, DO ’98,Douglassville, PA – Family Practice

Renee M. Bender, DO ’94, West Chester,PA – Obstetrics & Gynecology

Catherine E. Bernardini, DO ’96,Narberth, PA – Obstetrics & Gynecology

Trina Bradburd, DO ’86, Bryn Mawr, PA –Family Practice

Christopher P. Bruno, DO ’04, WestChester, PA – Endocrinology

Maria C. Bucco, DO ’88, Media, PA –Internal Medicine

Robert J. Bulgarelli, DO ’90, Glen Mills,PA – Cardiology

Norman M. Callahan, III, DO ’91,Berwyn, PA – Gastroenterology

Michael F. Carnuccio, DO ’95, WestChester, PA – Family Practice

Marylou Checchia-Romano, DO ’95,Boothwyn, PA – Family Practice

Jeffrey J. Citara, DO ’04, Exton, PA –Orthopedics

Brian C. Copeland, DO ’02, Wallingford,PA – Gastroenterology

Anthony J. DeSalvo, DO ’84, Broomall,PA – Family Practice

John W. Fornace, DO ’81, Royersford, PA –Cardiology

Brian G. Friedrich, DO ’87, Drexel Hill,PA – Family Practice

Laurie A. Gallagher, DO ’97 –Downingtown, PA – Family Practice

Carl A. Giombetti, DO ’69, Haverford,PA – Pediatrics

Robert W. Hindman, DO ’96,Downingtown, PA – Internal Medicine

Stephen M. Humbert, DO ’89,Havertown, PA – Internal Medicine

David R. Kalodner, DO ’82, Rose Valley,PA – Internal Medicine

Jack E. Kazanjian, DO ’98, Broomall, PA –Orthopedics

Daniel C. Lazowick, DO ’93, Glen Mills,PA – Internal Medicine

Norman Leopold, DO ’68, Chester, PA –Neurology

Matthew P. Lewullis, DO ’03,Collegeville, PA – Orthopedics

Susan M. Magargee, DO ’86, Bryn Mawr,PA – Pediatrics

Antoninus J. Manos, DO ’86, WestChester, PA – Family Practice

Robert D. McGarrigle, DO ’83, Media,PA – General Surgery

mattheWmeeker,do ’10Sometimes a LittleMeans a Lot

No one ever saidmedical residency waseasy. But Dr. Meekerwasn’t looking for easywhen he participated ina rotation at a Tibetan

community in Mundgod, India. “It was the furthest from my comfort zone I’veever been,” he admits. Dr. Meeker, a second-year resident at SusquehannaHealth’s Williamsport Family Medicine Residency Program, traveled with a teamof nine medical professionals to the Loseling Clinic, run by the charitable medicalorganization Loseling Altruistic Medical Association, an extension of the DrepungLoseling Monastery. The clinic provides free medical care to the Tibetan monks atthe monastery and the nuns and laypeople in the surrounding refugee camps.

Dr. Meeker treated 40 to 60 people daily; together, the team treated 1,200individuals during the week they were in India. Treatment included a lot of fungaland skin irritations and musculoskeletal issues that Dr. Meeker treated withOMM. The team brought both prescription and over-the-counter medical sup-plies and 2,000 pairs of reading and sunglasses (the latter proved to be one of thepatients’ most requested items).

Despite the medical team’s best intentions, providing good medical care waschallenging. “People were disappointed if they didn’t get different medications. Igave one woman Tylenol and Children’s Tylenol for her child. She came backbecause she thought she should have two different medicines. I would see peopleoutside the clinic swapping pills so everyone would have a little of each medicine.”

Nonetheless, the medical team had the opportunity to benefit the community.“Preventative issues were the most prevalent. We saw a lot of malnutrition andwere able to provide nutritional advice in addition to vitamins,” notes Dr. Meeker.

International medicine has been a passion of Dr. Meeker’s since he participated in a medical mission to Ecuador as a fourth-year medical student.“It’s a great way to experience other cultures,” he asserts.

D i g e s t 2 0 1 2 27

CLass notes


Frederick J. Bainhauer, Jr., DO ’63,Allentown, PA, December 5, 2011.

Richard K. Chambers, Jr., DO ’54,Lancaster, PA, December 5, 2011.

Rodney Hayes Chase, DO ’34, Sun City, FL, January 24, 2012.

James J. Costello, DO ’52, Clermont,FL, January 11, 2012.

John M. Doherty, DO ’66, Glen Mills,PA, February 6, 2012.

Floyd E. Dunn, DO ’36, Gravois Mills,MO, December 20, 2011.

Richard B. Greenberg, DO ’52, PrinceGeorge, VA, May 22, 2011.

James L. Harris, DO ’68, Fort Myers,FL, October 19, 2011.

Martin K. Heine, DO ’81, Fayetteville,PA, November 18, 2011.

John J. Heiser, DO ’57, Fort Lauderdale,FL, February 6, 2012.

George P. Jaeger, DO ’65, Clarion, PA,November 15, 2011.

Erwin H. Kliger, DO ’57, ImperialBeach, CA, November 6, 2011.

Louise R. Leach, RN ’51, Saint Charles,MO, February 18, 2012.

John C. Longacre, DO ’53, Portland,TX, March 4, 2012.

Edward J. Miskiel, Jr., DO ’72,Langhorne, PA, November 24, 2011.

Robert D. Pelicata, DO ’77, BalaCynwyd, PA, February 21, 2012.

John A. Pettineo, DO ’63, UpperChichester, PA, February 15, 2012.

Lewis M. Pincus, DO ’75, DeSoto, TX,November 22, 2011.

Herbert Spellman, DO ’59, Cherry Hill,NJ, January 26, 2012.

Anthony P. Trebino, DO ’88, PortRepublic, NJ, January 18, 2012.

Richman G. Weaver, DO ’54, York, PA,March 29, 2012.

Erin Schnepp Morris, DO ’03,Conshohocken, PA – Pediatrics

Shripali Patel, DO ’06, West Chester, PA –Internal Medicine

Brian D. Rosenthal, DO ’98, Blue Bell,PA – Urology

Carl W. Sharer, DO ’78, Phoenixville, PA –Obstetrics & Gynecology

Kelly Anne Spratt, DO ’87, Ambler, PA –Cardiology

David A. Thomas, DO ’78, Media, PA –Neurology

Michael A. Waronker, DO ’94,Glenmoore, PA – Gastroenterology

John C. Carlson, DO ’72, West Chester, PA,was named “Top Doctor in Obstetric Surgery”by Delaware Today (September 2011).

James C. Ferraro, DO ’81, Phoenix, AZ,was named “Top Doctor in Nephrologyand Hypertension” by Phoenix Magazine(April 2011).

Richard G. Tucker, DO ’74, Mount Laurel, NJ, was named “Top Doc in Obstetrics &Gynecology” by SJ Magazine (September 2011),and “Top Physician in Obstetrics & Gynecology”by South Jersey Magazine (August 2011).

Nicole M. Benson, MS/FM ’10, Nanticote, PA, married Ryan M.Lewis on October 15, 2011. The couple honeymooned in RivieraMaya, Mexico.

Steven R. Blasi, DO ’02, Easton, PA, and his wife, Jessica, are theproud parents of Aaron, born on November 8, 2011.

Nicholas S. Bower, DO ’05, York, PA, and his wife, Elizabeth,are the proud parents of Louis David, born on January 17, 2011.

Katherine D. Chilek, DO ’08, and Barry A. Marks, II, DO ’08,Pittsburgh, PA, wed on October 8, 2011, in Pittsburgh—withmany PCOM friends in attendance. The couple honeymooned inthe Dominican Republic.

Brian S. Galler, DO ’06, Brownstown, MI, and his wife,Marissa, are the proud parents of Jacob Benjamin, born onJanuary 3, 2012.

Carrie Samiec Hempel, DO ’02, Perry Hall, MD, and her husband,James, are the proud parents of Nathan, born on September 23, 2011.

Nicole K. Luetke, DO ’02, Lansdale, PA, and her husband,Jeffrey, are the proud parents of Isabella Katherine, born onJanuary 22, 2012.

Jeff T. Sensenig, DO ’05, and Rebekah (Vreeland) Sensenig,DO ’05, Las Vegas, NV, are the proud parents of Nathan William,born on December 22, 2011. Nathan joins big brother LukeRobert in the growing Sensenig family.

Nicole H. Sirchio, DO ’02, MBA, Land O’ Lakes, FL, is proudto announce the birth of her daughter, Lily, on October 5, 2012.

Dennis C. Slagle, II, DO ’06, Fairmount City, PA, and his wife,Stacey, are the proud parents of their first child, Noah Robert,born on November 3, 2011, at Magee Women’s Hospital of theUniversity of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

On a Personal Note

In Memoriam

Baby Blasi Baby Bower Baby Hempel Baby SirchioBaby Sensenig Baby Slagle

dedicated time for spiritual reflection; however, I became emo-tionally focused on the three wounded warriors. I assessed theirdisabilities from the back of the chapel. The wheelchair-boundHispanic soldier closest to me was an average-sized guy in hisearly 20s. He was reciting prayers with his friends. Although heappeared normal, it was obvious that his legs were paralyzed.

The second wounded warrior had an above-knee right legamputation. He was staring straight ahead with his left footrhythmically rocking his infant son asleep in a car seat. This30-something-year-old father had well-healed burns of thescalp, ears, and face, with extensive white-pink scarring meltedlike wax around his bony, bald cranium. To his immediateleft, his wife smiled as she held their three-year-old daughterand proudly wore a bold red lanyard around her neck embla-zoned with the letters “U.S.M.C.”

The chaplain then asked the congregation if they had anyspecial prayer requests. By this time, my thoughts were con-sumed with empathy for these disabled warriors. The thirdsoldier sitting near the left front row raised his hand. Hecalled out the names of his two buddies who had died incombat when he was injured and asked us to pray for themand their families.

The third wounded warrior, in his late 20s, was built like alinebacker with broad shoulders. He sat at attention. A deltoidsported a tattoo depicting a waving U.S. flag. His left leg waselevated in a long leg cast with a 101st Airborne baseball capresting on top of his forefoot. His right leg was amputatedbelow the knee. He looked content. His mother sat next toher son, and his father quietly wept throughout the entirechapel service.

These soldiers in the chapel unlocked the disturbing memo-ries of Philadelphia long ago. Their physical wounds werehealing, but life as they knew it would never be the same.Their lives had been redefined by life-altering injuries. Whathad they witnessed in the theater of war? Could they ever rec-oncile their wounds, pain, fears, and nightmares? Would theyever feel whole again?

My thoughts were interrupted as the congregation began topray. The chaplain asked us to exchange a sign of peace with ahandshake or an expression of love with a family member. Atthat moment, the three young men wheeled directly towardme to shake my hand. The macho linebacker soldier gave mea firm handshake and said, “Thanks, Doc, for taking care ofsoldiers.” I sat down overwhelmed. I had never felt so vulnera-ble. I couldn’t do more than sit there and cry.

Dr. Battafarano ([email protected]) serves aschief, rheumatology service, Brooke Army Medical Center, and clinical professor of medicine, University of Texas Health ScienceCenter – San Antonio.

© Annals of Internal Medicine

One Sunday morning, I had just completed ward rounds. I heard a page overhead that chapel services would begin in lessthan 5 minutes. My to-do list was short, so I decided to attend.The chapel at Brooke Army Medical Center is simple, with 10rows of chairs fanning out on either side and a row along theback wall. When I arrived, the congregation was singing theopening hymn to organ music, and the chaplain was at thealtar. Because there were no open seats, I stood by the backentrance. My thoughts were still focused on medical problemsand many unanswered questions. As the prayer service began, Ilooked up toward the altar. Until then, I had not noticed thethree young men in wheelchairs along the center aisle.

Our medical center is a busy place, providing routine andtrauma care for active duty and retired military and theirdependents. Brooke has been supporting the woundedthrough all of our great wars. During the Vietnam War, ourhospital became famous for its burn treatment center andmore recently had become an amputee center of excellencefor troops coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq. Everyday I saw disfigured warriors with severe burns wrapped inneoprene masks and bandages and others with well-healedstumps after amputation. Some wounded warriors motoraround in state-of-the-art wheelchairs; others rehab on pros-thetic legs or circular frame external fixators. These imageshad become a large part of my hospital culture.

These images often brought me back to middle school inPhiladelphia. I had often seen many men in uniform riding inwheelchairs or walking with crutches at shopping centers, onthe train, and even in Valley Forge Park. Our black-and-whiteTV sets highlighted the Vietnam War every night at dinner,showing gunfire from helicopters or body bags or antiwar pro-

testers. The war on television had been going on since Iwas in the second grade. My friends and I playedall kinds of combat scenarios in the neighbor-hood that imitated the shows “Combat” and“The Gallant Men.”

Vietnam was a place far from where welived. None of my friends knew muchabout the war. But seeing these college-agedsoldiers without limbs made me feel souneasy that I could not look at the amputees

for very long. My games of playing sol-dier became a frightening reality ofwar when seeing these men.But these soldiers had lostmore than a limb. Thoseboyhood images never leftmy subconscious.

My personal intentionsfor attending chapel services that morningwere rooted in a

my tUrn essay

images of healing by Daniel F. Battafarano, DO ’83

P h i l a D e l P h i a C o l l e g e o f o s t e o P a t h i C M e D i C i n e

THE FUND FOR PCOM

You love PCOM.

The Fund for PCOM has been the primaryvehicle through which alumni, parents andfriends express their loyalty to the College.

Annual gifts are a meaningful way for donorsto demonstrate their belief in the College’s

continued commitment to the recruitment and training of osteopathic physicians andgraduate students who will employcompassionate, holistic approaches to clinical, didactic and other professionalresponsibilities required in today’s healthcareand scientific environments.

We invite you to play a pivotal role in the life of the College through an annual gift to The Fund for PCOM.Your gift will provide discretionary funding that will be directed to the areas of greatest need at PCOM. Call the Office of Alumni Relations and Development at 800-739-3939 or visit www.fund.4.pcom.edu.

Non-Profit Organization

U.S. Postage

P A I D

Upper Darby, PA

Permit No. 167

PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE4180 City AvenuePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania 19131-1695

Address Service Requested

Date post:	20-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	philadelphia-college-of-osteopathic-medicine
View:	238 times
Download:	0 times

PCOM Digest 2012 No 1

Documents