Since Last Tuesday

Submitted by Tim.Byers on Tue, 06/28/2011 - 09:06

It has been more than a couple of Tuesdays since I last wrote.  Lots have happened, and lots are on my mind.

Since I last wrote I have traveled to exotic places – Scotland and Pueblo.  One to address the Royal Society of Edinburgh on cancer prevention and one to facilitate planning about community health workers.  Both were fun.

Then there was the NCI site visit for our Cancer Center renewal: 30 peer reviewers judging our $45 million funding request, and only 8 hours to get it right.  Apart from their shuttle bus not showing up, the visit went very well.  If only the NCI had enough money.

We are making progress on selecting a new Dean for the CSPH.  We are now down to 10 excellent candidates and will soon invite about half of them to visit campus. Maybe before the snow flies we will have a new Dean.

Change is everywhere.  There is a lot of new leadership at CDPHE, and 5 of our 13 advisors for the CPHP have changed jobs in the last year.  Of course change is constant, but the pace of change seems pretty fast right now.  Not complaining, just noting.

In recent days I have been consumed by images of imaging.  The National Lung Screening Trial results will be published tomorrow.  With assistance from HealthTeamWorks I have formed an expert panel here in Colorado that is now working on creating a consensus information document for practitioners and the general public on the use of CT lung screening imaging.  This technology offers the biggest opportunity ever for saving lives through early cancer detection.  It is probably bigger than mammography and colonoscopy combined.  But we need to get this right. 

Lung CT is not the only imaging technology I have been consumed by this week.  I also bought my first fish-finder yesterday.  I will be testing it out in Michigan next week, looking for blue gills and bass.  Is this cheating?  Is CT lung screening somehow cheating?  For CT I am sure it is not.  For the fish-finder, I am still ambivalent.  But I am sure it will be fun.  Besides, the fish I catch will be caught in the act of their trying to eat other fish, so even if the fish-finder is cheating, it is the hand of justice at some level.