OU-COM wins three AACOM Excellence in Communications awards
College faculty and staff played leadership roles at last week’s AACOM and AODME Joint Annual Meeting
 

By Anita Martin

The Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM) received three Excellence in Communications Awards from the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) last week, presented at the April 9-12 Joint Annual Meeting of AACOM and the Association of Osteopathic Directors and Medical Educators. The awards included:

• Family Health Radio: First Place, Best Program: Public Education or Community Service. To listen, go to http://www.fhradio.org/.
• Summer Scholars Video: First Place, Best Multimedia. To watch, go to: http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/SummerScholars/.
• The Long Road Back: A family physician recounts his experience in Iraq: Second Place, Best Feature Story or Article. To read, go to http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/communications/pdf/TDOs-f2007.pdf.

In addition, many OU-COM faculty, staff and alumni and CORE faculty and directors of medical education contributed at this April 9-12 annual meeting as session speakers, plenary panelists and research presenters.

As the first AACOM and AODME Joint Annual Meeting, the convention fostered discussion and collaboration between the two entities, which represent undergraduate and postdoctoral medical education, respectively.

“The meeting was a great opportunity for these two groups of educators to come together and share ideas,” said Peter Dane, D.O., associate dean for pre-doctoral education. “This should help to increase the continuity between undergraduate and graduate medical education—something that we at OU-COM already work hard to achieve.”

Keith Watson, D.O., associate dean of graduate medical education, said that the timing was right for a joint AACOM and AODME meeting. “In recent Medical Education Summits, we’ve seen some consensus in terms of areas where we need to do more collaborative work,” said Watson, who chaired the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation Medical Education Summit in January 2006 and took part in Medical Education Summit II in November 2007. Among central convention discussions, Watson names student competency development and intergenerational issues in medical education.

“This meeting showed a lot of synergism,” Watson said. “It brought together some of the best minds for both undergraduate medical education and the clinical sites to represent the full continuum of medical education.”

The 2008 AACOM Excellence in Communications Awards and OU-COM recognize the following contributors:

Harold C. Thompson III, D.O., assistant professor of emergency medicine, hosts Family Health®.®. Thompson works on the Express Care team of University Medical Associates and serves as director of multicultural affairs at OU-COM. Family Health,® is recorded, edited and mastered at the Ohio University Center for Public Media by producer Don Bilski. Carl J. Denbow, Ph.D., OU-COM special media project director, directs the series. Production and distribution are supported in part by OU-COM, the Ohio Osteopathic Foundation and the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons.

The Summer Scholars video was produced by Ohio University Communications and Marketing, with support from the former Center of Excellence for Multicultural Medicine and the Offices of Communication and Admissions.

 “The Long Road Back: A family physician recounts his experience in Iraq” was authored by Capt. Larry Robinson, D.O. (’02), with editing support by OU-COM writer/editor Susan Green.