What’s New in the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane? 

By Richard Oberhelman, MD; Acting Chair

Well, a lot is new, especially for those of you who have not been a part of our department for several years.  As many of you know, New Orleans was the venue for last year’s ASTMH Annual Meeting, and our faculty had the pleasure of catching up with many of you at our Alumni Reception held in conjunction with ASTMH in December, 2008.   In the process of tracking down alumni, we accumulated an extensive and updated email contact list.  Therefore, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to share the many new and exciting things happening in the Dept. of Tropical Medicine with our alumni.   We also want to keep up with you, especially as we work to comply with accreditation requirements that include information about alumni.  So please stay in touch with us, let us know if you are working on something that we would be interested in, and we will try to let you know what we’re doing so that we can keep working together.  

Initially, we discussed sending a one-time newsletter to highlight all the news from the department in a single issue.  Quickly it became obvious that that would be too much, so our plan is to send out periodic issues that highlight a few of our many new activities in each issue.  In this first issue, in addition to several featured items, we’ve included our current list of faculty members and a brief summary of their roles, focus areas, and research activities in the department.  

I have had the privilege of serving as Acting Chair of the Dept. of Tropical Medicine since January 2008, while a formal search process for the position of department Chair was carried out.   Thankfully, the search process was relatively brief and successful, and Dr. Nirbhay Kumar from Johns Hopkins has accepted the position of Chair starting in January 2010.   Needless to say, one of the featured items in this edition is about him and his work.

Just to give you an overview of the many things that we will try to share with you in coming editions, here is a list of activities that I believe many of you will be interested in hearing about:

1.         Construction of a new biosafety level (BSL) 3 lab in the JBJ building

2.         New summer course in Malaysia for undergraduate students, led by Dr. Latha Rajan

3.         Summer course for MPH students in Sierra Leone, led by Dr. Frederique Jacquerioz and Dr. Daniel Bausch

4.         Major Gates Foundation award to Dr. Dawn Wesson, to study the impact of lethal ovitraps as a control measure for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

5.         Fullbright Scholar Award for Dr. Donald Krogstad

6.         Expanded Chagas Disease initiative, with collaborators from the Centro de Investigaciones Hideyo Noguchi in Merida, Mexico and the Free Univerisity of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

7.         The Tulane-Xavier Minority Health International Research Training (MHIRT) Program, in collaboration with Xavier University of Louisiana, which provides international research training opportunities for minority group students and is led by Dr. Richard Oberhelman (see write up in this edition).

8.         Tropical Medicine faculty are very involved in the new Bachelor of Science in Public Health (BSPH) program, an undergraduate degree in Public Health that is the fastest growing undergraduate program at Tulane.

9.         Some Tulane National Primate Research Center (TNPRC) scientists are now faculty members in Tropical Medicine, and collaborations with research programs based at TNPRC are increasing. 

10.       Hurricane Katrina, 4 years later:  How we fared, how we responded, what we learned, how we changed, and where we are now.  

I really hope that you enjoy this chance to hear about our news, and that you will come to visit us when you are in New Orleans!

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