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.”