Newspapers / InterCom (Durham, N.C.) / Feb. 13, 1976, edition 1 / Page 1
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To Make Family Physician a Better Scientist Epidemiology Program Established Here A new program in family medicine designed to make the family doctor a better scientist is about to get underway here. Dr. E. Harvey Estes Jr., chairman of the Department of Community Health Sciences, reported that a faculty research and training grant The supervisor of the* Medical Electronics Shop here flew to earthquake-stricken Guatemala Wednesday morning taking $5,000 worth of donated radio equipment with him. rim Heflin, whose shop is'a part of the Engineering and Operations Department, was given leave of absence from his job to help set up an emergency communications network between doctors in the Central American nation and relief agencies in the United States. The radio equipment included five radio transmitters and 10 portable transceiver units, all donated by the R.L. Drake Manufacturing Co. of Miamisburg, Ohio. Over 12 tons of food, donated by residents of the Triangle area as of Wednesday evening, were to follow Heflin on his mercy mission. Grey Stone Church The food, along with $12,000, was collected by the staff and congregation of the Grey Stone Baptist Church. Heflin is a member of the church which is located on Hillsborough Road in West Durham. The Nello L. Teer Co., a locally-based construction firm which has been building roads throughout Latin America for many years, volunteered “to ship every single item directly to Guatemala,” according to the Rev. Malbert Smith of Grey Stone. Teer employees, numbering about 1,000 in Guatemala, have already begun clearing away rubble left by the earthquake. Several Duke medical graduates, former housestaff and faculty members were in Guatemala when the earthquake struck. Among those were Dr. E. Croft Long, formerly professor of community health sciences and associate director of undergraduate medical education, and Dr. Chris Arnold of the 1975 medical class. Dr. Long Safe Contacted at home. Long’s son Croft said his family had received both a letter and a telegram from his father in Guatemala. Long was safe, he wrote, and was busy caring for injured persons in Antigua, the old capital about 25 miles northwest of Guatemala City. Long’s son said there was no word on the condition of the rural health technician school which the physician amounting to $802,885 has been received from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Princeton, N.H., to support the program for three years, beginning July 1. Focusing on epidemiology — the basic science discipline dealing with the cause, distribution and control of had helped establish in a former United Fruit Co. hospital in the interior near Quirigua. On vacation in Guatemala, Arnold and his wife were asleep in a hotel at Lake Atitlan when the tremors began. Shortly after escaping the building, they coincidentally met Dr. Lee Lesserman who served a residency in pediatrics here. disease within a community — the project will attempt to make doctors better able to recognize the cause of illness among their regular patients, and to be more effective in drawing up plans for control of the illness. “We want to equip the family doctor with the ability to recognize Both doctors provided' medical assistance, and Arnold has since returned to New Orleans, La., where he was working prior to the vacation. Daily Radio Contact In an interview on Monday, Tim Heflin said he expects to be in Guatemala for at least a week setting up the emergency radio transmission unique phenomena, and to interpret their significance,” Estes said. “We want him to be able to evaluate whether it means something. That’s what epidemiology will teach him to do.” Intensive training in epidemiology hasn’t been given to family doctors in the past, he said, just to public health doctors. With such training, Estes believes that doctors in a community setting could contribute greately to existing knowledge within epidemiology, as well as improve the quality of care to their own patients. The family doctor with such training should also be more able to study the occurrence of illness in the family unit, and to distinguish between the effects of heredity and the effects of a common exposure in the home, he said. The new project will be joint endeavor between Duke and the' University of North Carolina School of Public Health at Chapel Hill. It will include an addition to the faculty of the existing Family Medicine Program, involvement of resident doctors in epidemiologic research, and a medic^ teaching program at both the undergraduate and graduate levels to acquaint students with epidemiologic principles as applied to family medicine and primary care. The first step in the program will be to recruit a new faculty member with an established reputation in both medicine and the field of clinical epidemiology, who would become director of the overall effort. The selection will be made, Estes said, in collaboration with the Epidemiology Department of the School of Public Health at Chapel Hill. Duties of the director will include supervision of research conducted by faculty and residents within the Family Medicine Program, participation in teaching conferences for residents and students, and responsibility for formal instruction in epidemiology. When the director is appointed, Estes said, a member of the current teaching faculty in family medicine will be freed from regular duties and enrolled as a full-time student at UNC-CH to pursue a degree in epidemiology. In the second and third years of the grant, a second and third faculty member likewise will be freed to pursue the same course of study. At the end of the three-year period Estes said it is anticipated that the director of the teaching effort and the three cross-trained faculty members would become supervisors of resident research activities and also colleagues in the overall teaching program. Meanwhile, during the course of the project faculty and resident research activities will be carried out in settings already established within the framework of the Family Medicine Program. An earlier $1.1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation enabled Duke to embark on a program of research and training involving development of “community laboratories,” where young doctors are introduced to social, economic, and other factors influencing health care. “This new program will rest on the shoulders of the previous one,” Estes said, in that it will make use of accumulated data, and also furnish, experienced staff and faculty. (Continued on page 3) APPEAL THROUGH THE MEDIA—Tim Heflin (at right), supervisor of the Medical Electronics Shop here, spoke with a camera crew from WRAL-TV at the Grey Stone Baptist Church on Monday requesting that citizens of the Triangle area donate food and money to help Guatemalan earthquake victims. On Wednesday, Heflin flew to the Central American nation with emergency radio equipment and expects to return to Durham within a week. Twelve tons of food and over $12,000 were collected by Heflin's church, and the Nello L. Teer Co. of Durham volunteered to ship the food to Guatemala without charge. (Photo by David Williamson) ntcKcom duke univcRslty mc6icM ccnten VOLUME 23, NUMBER 6 FEBRUARY 13,1976 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA Tim Heflin Flies to Central America To Set Up Emergency Radio Network
InterCom (Durham, N.C.)
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Feb. 13, 1976, edition 1
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