With the recent passage of historic federal health reform legislation, our country has entered a new era that will affect the access to and cost of health care for millions of Americans.

As the primary source of education for the next generation of health care professionals in Kansas, a major provider of health care regionally, and an expanding center of biomedical research, KU Medical Center has a responsibility to do everything it can to inform and educate the people of our state on how health reform will impact them.

Whether you’re a student, educator, doctor, researcher, physician, nurse, or other health care professional, there’s a good chance that someone is going to ask you about health reform and what it means. While most of us won’t wade through the entire 2,000-plus pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, we should still have the knowledge to discuss the legislation and the effect it will have on our state and country.

KU Medical Center has launched a special health reform section in the Public Affairs area of our Web site. This Understanding Federal Health Reform section has a list of valuable resources that explain how the legislation will affect everyone from consumers, businesses, states, health care providers, hospitals and insurance providers.

In addition, Marcia Nielsen, PhD, MPH, Vice Chancellor for Public Policy and Planning and a faculty member in the Department of Health Policy and Management, earlier this week gave a detailed presentation that laid out exactly what health reform entails and why it matters to all of us. If you were unable to attend, we have posted Dr. Nielsen’s presentation on the KUMC Web site.

Please take some time to visit our Web site so you can become more familiar with the key components of health reform. I hope that as you do, you will keep in mind that when people ask about health reform, what they usually want to know is how it's going to affect them on a personal level. That is how Social Security was promoted to Americans in the 1930s, how the nation was sold on the importance of Medicare in the 1960s, and how we should position health care reform in 2010. We need to keep it simple, understandable, relatable, and personal.

In the News

I was honored by the announcement today that I would be appointed by the White House to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The Commission will advise the President on bioethical issues that may emerge from advances in biomedicine and related areas of science and technology. I'm looking forward to working with the other esteemed members of this group. More information about the Commission can be found here.

The work of several KU Medical Center researchers, including Joseph Tash, PhD, Kathy Roby, PhD, and Rakesh Shrivastava, MD FACP, were featured in a special section of Ingram's magazine on promising life sciences research going on in the Kansas City area. You can read the entire section on the Ingram's Web site. Just click on the "Destination: Innovation" link.

Vijayalaxmi Gupta, PhD, a post-doc fellow with the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, was interviewed on Fox 4 News for a story on whether microgravity affects the female reproductive system. Sixteen female mice are on the current Space Shuttle mission, and KUMC researchers will study them after the mission to see if zero gravity compromises their reproductive function. See the complete story here.

Stormont-Vail HealthCare has joined the Midwest Cancer Alliance Partners Advisory Board. The board focuses on the pursuit of NCI designation for the region. MCA members collaborate on accelerating the translation of cancer research discoveries to alliance members. Read more here.