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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 12, 2018)
Page 4 September 12, 2018 Accepting the Challenge c ontinued froM f ront ucation. “Everyone regrets this dis- ruption our patients are expe- riencing in their care. The key message for me is the peer re- view process will help us be patient-centered and bring the program back as quickly as possible,” he said. The distress that the suspen- sion caused for the university’s 20 waitlisted heart transplant patients, some of whom trans- ferred to other facilities, was something the university said it profoundly regretted. “We are deploying every re- source at our disposal to ensure they have immediate and ongo- ing care,” the statement read. Jacobs, who is the fifth pres- ident of Oregon’s only aca- demic health hospital, took over duties last month from Dr. Joe Robertson, who retired as OHSU president after being di- agnosed with multiple sclerosis last fall. In May, the university board of directors unanimously approved the selection of Ja- cobs, 64, after a months-long search. Jacobs told the Portland Ob- server that his previous six- year tenure as the executive vice president, provost, and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Med- ical Branch helped him under- stand the challenges of running an academic health center. “In terms of the academic duties that are part of a univer- sity like ours, to an academic health center, it’s more about collaboration, coordination, and cultivation [rather than the command and control ap- proach of previous models],” Jacobs, whose calling to science and servicing com- munities set him on the path to medical school early on, will oversee all of the Port- land-based University’s opera- tions, which include the recent- ly completed Knight Cancer Research Building. The state-of-the-art, 320,000-acre cancer treatment and research facility, which held an open house Saturday, was funded by the Oregon Legislature and the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute and holds the lofty aspiration of eliminating cancer complete- ly. Thousands of donors in- vested in the project as part of a fundraising challenge by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny. Jacobs said the way the state legislature, governor, and citi- zens of Oregon coalesced with OHSU to fund the center was something he admired even before taking the position. “The tremendous spirit of collaboration is one of the attributes that drew me to OHSU,” Jacobs said, adding that he’s eager to see the sci- entific progress that comes out of the facility. Collaboration with commu- nity stakeholders to inform strategic plans for the future was a method Jacobs used at University of Texas. He said he’s in the midst of using that same approach at OHSU, the first step of which he calls a “listening tour” of people all over the state, whom he con- siders stakeholders of the uni- versity. “Over the next several weeks…we’ll be asking folks who are interested in the uni- versity their opinions while we craft this idea of what we want university to be in the near fu- ture--2025, for example…and then we’ll work backwards to reverse engineer that process.” Jacobs predicts creating task forces that are transparent to the public and comprised of some of the hospital’s 16,000 employees will be instrumen- tal in carrying out their goals. “We’ll have to measure our success along the way. We will decide together what our key performance indicators will be and then we will decide how we will track them and then we will regularly reevaluate our progress to see if we need to decide our objectives or change our approach,” Jacobs said. Creating a strategic plan to reflect the communities’ col- lective desired goals will be next on his to-do list, a move to build upon the strategic plan previously set in place that his predecessor, Dr. Robertson, sponsored. The current strategic plan the university has posted on its website, called Vision 2020, lists an organization “diverse in people and ideas” as one of its goals, a tradition Jacobs plans to continue. “I think diversity is a moral imperative. It certainly reso- nates with me personally,” Ja- cobs said. He added diverse organiza- tions tend to better serve their faculty, staff, and clients, ac- cording to research. An ongoing effort for staff to undergo training that is de- signed to thwart the negative effects of unconscious bias- es at the university is another measure the university is tak- ing to ensure inclusiveness. “We’ll continue that initia- tive, I think that’s an import- ant one,” Jacobs said. In terms of Jacobs’ educa- tion goals of the university, he advocates for a team-based, patient-centered pedagogy. In addition to a medical doctorate, Jacobs also boasts a master’s in public health and is an American College of Surgeons fellow. He’s also held faculty positions at Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, Har- vard, Creighton University, and Duke University, where he was chair of surgery for about a decade before moving to Texas. As a researcher and doctor who once worked the front lines with patients, Jacob‘s interests included nutrition and metabolism and how that relates to caring for patients pre- and post- surgery. He also researched nuclear magnet- ic resonance spectroscopy of organ function, bioenergetics, and growth factors in the nu- tritional support of patients. Jacobs was originally in- spired to enter the science field as a child from seeing Russians making headway in the space race during the Cold War era of the 1950s with their release of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite. He also wished to follow in the footsteps of his older sister, who was four years his senior and participated in national science foundation summer enrichment activities. But in order to reconcile the morals his parents instilled in him during his upbringing, which heavily emphasized communi- ty public service, he switched from being a full time basic science researcher to pursu- ing a career in medicine, with the nudging of a wise college counselor. “Over my career it’s really been about trying to figure out how to serve while also inves- tigating problems or challeng- es that directly impacted pa- tient care with the hope that I could in some way contribute to something that advanced the state of the art as regards to patient care,” he said. Community Support for Nike c ontinued froM p age 3 headquarters in Beaverton and along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Portland. Kaepernick was in the Port- land area Thursday to view the premiere of the highly antici- pated Nike ad. The former San Francisco 49er became a voice for civil rights and justice two years ago when he started tak- ing a knee during the playing of the national anthem in pro- test of officer- involved shoot- ings of black Americans. At Nike’s “Just Do It” 30th anniversary event, partici- pants viewed the commercial spot featuring Kaepernick and other black athletes which pre- miered during the NFL season opener. The star athlete addressed Nike officials and the pub- lic, mentioning his litigation against the NFL for being locked out of the game, saying, “We wouldn’t be able to do this without your support, so special thank you to everybody and thank you for believing in me, as well as Nike and being able to do this.”
