Register now: Paddle the Delta CME Conference

The USA Department of Emergency Medicine's Wilderness Medicine Division will host Paddle the Delta, a challenging and informative continuing medical education conference, Sept. 30 to Oct. 3, at the 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center on the Mobile Causeway. 

The conference will bring together experts to share their research, experience and interventions surrounding wilderness medicine. Speakers include USA emergency medicine faculty: Dan Holleyman, M.D., Grace Lagasse, M.D., Raymond Maguire, M.D., Walker Plash, M.D., and Lynn Yonge, M.D.

Participants will earn 14 to 17 hours of CME credits in preparation for a guided one-night wilderness expedition in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. This course has been approved for Fellowship in the Academy of Wilderness Medicine credits through the Wilderness Medical Society.

Cost is $450 for the CME course only; or $1,000 for the CME course, canoeing and camping.  

Visit CME Tracker to view the brochure and register for the conference. 

USA researchers study cat flea saliva to uncover how diseases are spread

Monika Danchenko, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology and immunology, is studying the saliva of fleas to determine how pathogens are transmitted.

With a goal of stopping the spread of diseases that infect pets and humans, scientists at the USA College of Medicine have been studying fleas – specifically the microscopic salivary glands of cat fleas – as evidence suggests several diseases are transmitted through the parasite’s infected spit.

Supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, research from USA recently was published in the peer-reviewed journal Pathogens and Disease. The July 2021 issue includes a research paper by Monika Danchenko, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, titled “Dynamic Gene Expression in Salivary Glands of the Cat Flea during Rickettsia felis Infection.”

Fleas are small parasites of birds and mammals whose blood-feeding can transmit a variety of serious pathogens causing diseases including bubonic plague, flea-borne rickettsioses (typhus and spotted fever) and cat scratch disease.

Work on the project began in 2018 and was interrupted – at least briefly – by the COVID-19 global health pandemic. Two others contributed to the work: Kevin Macaluso. Ph. D., professor and chair of microbiology and immunology, and graduate researcher Hanna Laukaitis.

“We hope a better understanding of what cat fleas require to feed and transmit pathogens will give physicians, veterinarians and public health officials the information needed to prevent new outbreaks of a number of diseases,” Danchenko said, “and to provide more effective treatment for people and pets.”

The article is timely as a rise of typhus cases have been reported in recent years in states including California and Texas. Those cases have been attributed to fleas associated with increasing populations of rodents and opossums, and requires basic science efforts to combat a serious risk to human health.

Read the full article here: https://academic.oup.com/femspd/article/79/5/ftab020/6189691

Faculty Spotlight: Benjamin Niland, M.D.

Benjamin Niland, M.D.

Academic title: Assistant professor of internal medicine; interim division director, gastroenterology; director, section on motility, gastroenterology

Joined the USA College of Medicine faculty: 2019 following completion of my fellowship training here at South

What does your position in the USA COM/USA Health entail?
I care for patients as part of my clinical duties as a gastroenterologist as well as provide leadership of the gastroenterology division, which includes day-to-day clinical operations, recruitment of new faculty, expansion of new programs, management of the GI motility service line, participation in scholarly activity, and involvement in the education of medical students, residents and GI fellows.

What is your favorite or most rewarding part of your position?
The most rewarding parts are having the ability to make a positive change in the lives of patients, and seeing the growth and development of young, future leaders in their field of work.

What research or other initiatives are you involved in?
Current initiatives involve an open-access endoscopy pathway to decrease barriers for patients in need of colon cancer screening, an acute care pathway for patients in need of more urgent outpatient GI evaluation, expansion of the GI fellowship, recruitment of GI physicians and advanced practice providers, development of the GI motility service line including new procedures and protocols to offer new services to our community. Research interests include esophageal disorders, GI motility, functional GI disease, and colon cancer screening.

What is your advice for medical students?
Develop the curiosity and skills to be a lifelong learner in your field (because your profession will require it).

Learn the business and politics of medicine as it is not always covered comprehensively in your formal education, yet it will likely be important at some point in your career.

You may have heard of “The three A’s” of being a good physician: affability, availability and ability. Your education will tend to focus on ability, but I find the other two are also very important.

Keep your other interests outside of medicine, and don’t let school or career consume you as a person.

What are your hobbies/interests outside of work?
My wife and three young daughters are the center of my life outside of work. I enjoy golfing, hunting, fishing, and cooking out whenever I get the chance. I am a big sports fan. We are originally from Louisiana and enjoy getting back to those Cajun roots when we visit family and friends.

Neonatologist Kelechi Ikeri joins pediatrics faculty

USA Health Children’s & Women’s Hospital is expanding its interdisciplinary team of pediatric physicians with the addition of Kelechi Ikeri, MBBS, FAAP, a neonatologist who joins the region’s only level lll neonatal intensive care unit to care for extremely premature infants.

“I love taking care of newborns,” Ikeri said. “Neonatology gives me an opportunity to go into the physiology and reasons behind the illnesses that children can face.”

Ikeri, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the USA College of Medicine, said he was drawn to USA Health because of the patient population’s wide range of complexity and cases: “They afford you the opportunity to progress in your career in terms of clinical experience and quality improvement.”

Ikeri was born in Nigeria and earned a bachelor of medicine and surgery degree from the University of Lagos College of Medicine in Idi-Araba, in Lagos, Nigeria. An interest in critical care medicine, he said, attracted him to neonatology. 

He worked in hospitals in Nigeria and the island of Tobago before moving to the United States in 2015. Ikeri completed a pediatric residency at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Centre in Brooklyn, New York in 2018 and completed a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Pa., in June 2021.  

He is certified in general pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics, and is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association and American College of Medical Quality. 

Save the date: OB-GYN Conference set for Oct. 14-15

The 29th Annual Obstetrics and Gynecology Conference is set for Oct. 14-15, 2021. This year's conference will be virtual. 

This event will be of particular interest to OB-GYN physicians, family medicine physicians, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, nurse midwives, ultrasonographers, and other healthcare professionals associated with obstetrics and gynecology.

Continuing medical education credits will be provided for physicians, nurses and social workers.

Details, including a list of speakers and where to register, will be available in the next few weeks. For more information, call 251-415-1496 or visit the OB-GYN Conference page.