UAB Briefs: UAB Hospital scores in new rankings, commencement Aug. 14-15
In this weekly online feature, we keep track of interesting people and events on campus at The University of Alabama at Birmingham.
We also provide updates regarding UAB’s efforts to cope with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
For example, Gov. Ivey’s “Safer at Home” state order remains in effect and restricts visitors in state hospitals. UAB Hospital and UAB Medicine clinics have implemented and must enforce these visitation guidelines.hospital.
For information regarding how to plan your in-person UAB Medicine hospital or clinic visit, click here.
To read other UAB COVID-19 updates or find health information, go to uab.edu/coronavirus.
Let us know about people, events and programs on campus that deserve a mention in UAB Briefs. Email jchambers@starnespublishing.com.
TOPS AGAIN
UAB Hospital has been again named the best hospital in Alabama by U.S. News & World Report. The magazine released its 2020-2021 Best Hospital rankings on July 28. To see the complete rankings, click here.
Eight specialty programs at UAB were listed in the magazine’s top 50 in America, with seven of those programs making the top 30. Two other UAB programs were noted as being “high performing.”
The ranked programs were rheumatology at No. 10, gynecology at No. 15, otolaryngology at No. 22, cardiology and heart surgery at No. 24, pulmonology and lung surgery at No. 25, cancer at No. 25, nephrology at No. 29 and geriatrics at No. 49.
This was the first top 25 ranking for the UAB cancer program, housed in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The “high-performing'' specialties were gastroenterology/GI surgery and neurology/neurosurgery.
VIRTUAL COMMENCEMENT
More than 1,845 students will graduate from UAB in two virtual ceremonies on Friday, August 14, and Saturday, August 15, according to UAB Media Relations.
The graduate ceremony, with approximately 1,262 graduating master’s and doctoral students, will air on the UAB Facebook, YouTube and Instagram TV channels on August 14 at 6 p.m.
For summer 2020, the UAB Graduate School will confer the university’s highest degrees on 76 students from 25 states and four countries representing 30 disciplines.
The undergraduate ceremony, with approximately 583 students, will air on the UAB Facebook, YouTube and Instagram TV channels on August 15 at 2 p.m.
For the virtual ceremony, graduating students were asked to submit 15-second videos of themselves, on topics ranging from their favorite things and what they enjoyed the most during their time at UAB to what they will miss as they leave campus life.
UAB has compiled the submitted videos to be included in the virtual ceremony, along with messages from campus and student government leaders.
Jazmine Benjamin, Graduate Student Government president, will be the graduate student speaker. She’s pursuing a doctoral degree in biomedical sciences
Tyler Huang, student body president and past executive vice president of the Undergraduate Student Government Association, will be the undergraduate student speaker. He is graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience with a minor in chemistry.
Use the hashtag #UABClassof2020 for both ceremonies. Full details for graduates are available at uab.edu/commencement.
LOTS OF TESTS
More than 200,000 college students in Alabama can be tested for COVID-19 with a free, rapid, non-invasive nasal swab-based procedure, to ensure a negative test — or quarantining in the case of a positive result — before returning to campus this fall, according to UAB Media Relations.
This is made possible by the implementation of GuideSafe Entry Testing, a large-scale testing strategy implemented throughout the state.
The UAB Department of Pathology, led by Dr. George Netto, adapted its clinically offered lab-developed testing capabilities to a pooling test approach.
This strategy will allow for ramping up testing capacity tenfold for the next 20-plus days leading up to the start of school.
“We opted for a simpler way of collecting specimens, by allowing students to do a nasal swab themselves, that makes it faster and easier than the nasopharyngeal swab, which requires a health care professional to administer,” Netto said in a UAB news release. “The utilization of nasal swabs coupled with our in-house-developed pooling strategy will enable us to significantly ramp up capacity while maintaining full testing accuracy.”
Dr. Sixto Leal Jr., an assistant professor of pathology and the director of the Microbiology Section in the Division of Laboratory Medicine, led the development of the testing strategy.
“The pooled testing approach allows for labs to do preliminary screening from several student samples at once,” Leal said. “Knowing that only a minority of those tests will be positive allows us to then focus on those few positive test results and pursue secondary confirmatory testing.”
This approach greatly increases test capacity to accommodate the Alabama college students looking to return to campus in August.